Light on the Hill

James Kaddis: God doesn't need or want me to be a salesman for him. He's never wanted that for me. He's never needed that for me. The only thing that I need to do is I need to be faithful and true to representing God exactly as he is.

Because if I represent him exactly as he is, people will hunger for him, and it will be him that they will seek after. If you want to know a solid growth plan, give them Jesus as he is. Don't give them the Jesus that you think is a softy. Don't give them the Jesus that you think falls into your character.

Guest (Male): I have found that peace only comes from you. I have found the joy only comes from you. I have found that 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. All I need is you. All I need is you. All I need is you.

Guest (Male): The real war that we fight every day cannot be seen, but everything is affected by it. Today on Light on the Hill, we're going to learn about a critical part of that battle. More than ever, we must pay special attention to what's happening in that realm, or we will suffer great loss. Here's Pastor James Kaddis in Mark Chapter 3 with the true face of demonic warfare.

James Kaddis: All right, we are in Mark Chapter 3. Where we left off, there was a discussion regarding the spirit of the law versus the letter of the law. This was a very extended conversation that we had. One of the things that we needed to establish is your more thorough understanding of what the difference between the two is and what God's intent was in establishing the letter for the purpose of exposing and building upon the spirit.

The thing that's really important is if you understand the very constructs of how God brings together the lessons that he wants to teach us, you will also be able to better understand why it is that we need to know these things and the mindset that actually drives it. There's a lot to be able to understand when you sit down and when you think it through. Perhaps one of the things that's most important and one of the things that's most significant is as you begin to put these things together, your relationship with the Lord continues to grow.

It actually becomes established in a way that you develop an anticipatory function within your very heart that recognizes what God would have you to do and where to go based on the track record that he's established for you. When you're able to better understand that and when you're better able to recognize what that all means and what that amounts to, it completely changes the way you think. It completely changes your heart and your mind, and it changes your approach based on the very things that are put in front of you day by day, moment by moment, because you've learned to fall into the pattern that God has established for you.

Oftentimes, we bring ourselves to a place where we want to understand more about the letter, we want to understand more about the laws and how to follow the laws, but we don't want to understand the mechanics of it. Sometimes, in not wanting to understand the mechanics, we don't understand the heart behind it. By not understanding the heart behind it, we don't recognize what the purpose of the initial letter of the law is, and then it breaks our resolve to want to do the things that are pleasing to God. When we begin to look at it as a series of mathematical equations—in other words, when we look at the chart versus the art—it continues to affect how we look at things and how we view things.

I'll give you an example of this. I'll tell you where this really begins to show up. When I get new believers that start coming to the church and they tend to be very growth-stunted, they come in, they're not really learning, they're not listening, they're not paying attention, they're not applying, they're not necessarily doing the things that have been instructed to them. One of the most common ebbs and flows that I see in their lives is they will come to me and they will give me this report. Praise the Lord, God has been so good to me this week. This week has been fantastic, it's been outstanding. God's been ministering to me. I'm on this spiritual high. God's taught me all these wonderful things, and it's just been so great.

Then I won't see them for a week. Sometimes I won't see them for two weeks. Sometimes I won't even see them for three weeks. Then they'll come back to me by week four and they'll say, God has really broken me. It's just been a really tough time. I've had a very hard time and it's just been very difficult. I don't even know if I'm saved. I get that a lot. A lot of people tell me that, especially going into that stunted growth stage where they're not really applying themselves or listening. They oftentimes repeat the pattern.

It's the same thing. You sit down and listen to what they have to say. Have you believed Jesus is Lord? Have you accepted the free gift that he's given to you? Do you understand that it's his work and not yours? Do you understand there's no contingency other than your willingness to accept what he's given you? We go over all of these things. I talk them through it. They walk away feeling a little bit better.

The next week, it's praise the Lord, God is so good. He's changed my life. I'll never be the same. I'm really walking with the Lord now. I'm truly saved. Then what happens three weeks later? I don't know if I was ever walking with the Lord. I don't know if my relationship with God is real. You see this stunted growth pattern that continues to exist.

The number one reason why that happens is because people become so externally focused on wanting to achieve what is in essence the letter of the law that they have forgotten about the spirit of the law. As a result, they have lost touch with or lost a complete understanding of the intent of God in doing what he does and the power of God in being able to help you get through the very things that were designed to show you your guilt in the first place.

If you think about the Old Testament law, the spirit of the law is in essence to show you your incapacity to keep it. Did you know that the spirit of the law of God was designed to show you that you are in essence incapable on any level of being able to obtain perfection? It won't work on your own. You cannot do it. You are completely incapable of doing it. The spirit of the law was designed in a way that when the letter is expressed, it will do exactly what I described.

If you use the letter of the law to become the very function of what the spirit was designed to do, you'll never be saved, for lack of a better term. You'll never experience what God has for you because you will always be condemned because you misunderstand or misappropriate what God's intent was for the law in the first place.

God says if you recognize the intent of the law was to show you your guilt, then by recognizing your guilt, it should force you or drive you into the arms of a Heavenly Father who will now appease that guilt by the judgment on his Son. His death, burial, and resurrection now gives you the credit for the perfect life that he lived. If you will do that based on your knowledge of the law, then the new law that you keep will far surpass any of the law that was used to show you your guilt.

In other words, Jesus explains this a little bit later on. He says the law has told you thou shalt not murder, but I tell you if you have anger in your heart, you've already murdered that person. The law tells you that you shall not commit adultery, but I tell you if you have lust in your heart, you've already committed adultery. Again, the law that surpasses the existing law that was designed to show you your guilt is far greater and far more stringent, but the capacity to be able to keep it is far easier because it is being kept under a much more substantial function, under a better tool.

The tool is the thing that you have obtained as a result of the purpose of the first law. In other words, the first law—the one that is impossible for you to keep—the one that you cannot keep worth anything was the law that drove you to the man who could keep it and give you credit for keeping it, thus teaching you to live a different way that far exceeds that of the first one.

Imagine if you're sitting with Jesus and he's telling you that's impossible. It is easier for a camel to enter into the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God. Can you imagine what the disciples are thinking when they hear that? The disciples are hearing everything that Jesus is saying and they're saying these things are impossible, God. How can anybody go to heaven?

Jesus is like, "Bingo." That's exactly what our intent was. The intent that we created in showing you the law was to demonstrate to you your incapacity to be able to function and facilitate a solution by which you follow it perfectly. You can't do it. It's impossible. You are incapable of approaching that distinct area. You're a human being. That's how we know you can't do it. Only one person has done it successfully, and that's Jesus Christ.

This becomes really interesting because if you will understand the spirit of the law, you will much better understand the letter of the law. If you recognize both of them and how they play together, then you are on the path to victory. When I speak to people who have been walking with the Lord for a long time, they could be in a moody place. They could have had a terrible week spiritually speaking where maybe they disobeyed God a lot, maybe they did some things that they didn't want to do, just like the Apostle Paul said: "The things I want to do I don't do, the things I don't want to do I do. Who will deliver me from this death trap, this body that I have that's literally a death trap?"

There are many people that struggle the same way the Apostle Paul does, but then they go back and they say, I thank the Lord, I thank God that through Jesus Christ I can find victory over these things. Then he goes on to step into the next phase of his life where he says that there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are walking with Christ, for those who are listening to the voice of the Spirit of God, for those who are walking according to the spirit as opposed to that of walking according to the flesh.

There's some very insightful and powerful direction that's being given to us, and it all is predicated upon understanding this relationship. It's all predicated upon recognizing what the spirit of the law is supposed to do versus what the letter of the law is supposed to do. These people who did not understand it on any level—they didn't understand it on the functional level, certainly didn't understand it on the relational level, certainly didn't understand it on a corporate level or on an individual level for that matter—they all wanted to condemn Jesus because they said he had violated the law even though the Bible tells us very distinctly and very clearly that Jesus Christ is literally the living word.

There's no way he's going to work against himself, and we'll actually find that out a little bit later. The point behind what I'm trying to say is this: these men fully did not understand what was going on and as a result, because of the evil intent of their heart, they wanted to destroy the Creator of the universe. We see evidence of it, and we didn't spend a lot of time talking about it, but look what it says in verse six. We read this last week. It says, "And the Pharisees went forth and straightway took counsel with the Herodians against him how they might destroy him."

When it talks about the Herodians that they took counsel with, you need to know this about them. The Herodians were a group of people who were very pro-Antipas. They were the people that followed Herod and they were very pro-his administration. In essence, they believed in the general purpose of the Roman world. They were very sympathetic towards those causes. The reason why that's significant is because the Sadducees were the greatest sympathizers with the Herodians.

If the Pharisees now are coming together with the Sadducees in order to kill Jesus, then you know that they want him dead very badly. The issue here is that no matter what factions exist between those who hate God, they will always come together to destroy those who love him. They'll always come together to do the evil that is necessary in order to take out the righteous. You see this playing out in the modern day. You see these people who are all generally evil and they all have very evil views, and they will literally rip each other's faces off if given the opportunity.

But they will stand unified and they will be bound together in a way that you can't even imagine if the common purpose is to destroy the things of the gospel, to destroy righteousness. I've watched many of these people who want to literally scratch out each other's faces get together staunchly to support the murder of babies, or they'll get together and stand unbreakable, inseparable in order to shut the mouths of the church up. They'll do things like that. It happens all the time.

These people are plotting. They're getting together to do something evil because, once again, they don't understand the purpose of God's law. They don't understand the difference between the spirit and the letter, and they also can't understand or can't even recognize that the spirit cannot be separated from the letter because if the spirit is separated from the letter, then the letter no longer carries the function that it was intended to carry. It doesn't make sense. You can't separate them.

Look what it goes on to say. It says, "But Jesus withdrew himself with his disciples to the sea and a great multitude from Galilee followed him and from Judea and from Jerusalem from Idumea and from beyond Jordan and they about Tyre and Sidon a great multitude when they had heard great things he did came unto him." They came from all over the country. These are people that came from all over the country and they even came from outside the country. These are all people that wanted to experience Jesus because they knew what he could do, and this was something that very much bothered those that have not experienced it.

They don't like it. You notice this: when people walk according to the word of God and God blesses them because they're prevailing, because they're doing what God wants them to do, it's always interesting how the ungodly can't stand them. It's always funny how that works. I have lost count of how many times I have gotten very, very angry emails, comments, people trying to do the craziest things that you can even imagine to try to shut our voices. You grow in popularity, and when you grow in popularity, your voice begins to spread out. As your voice begins to spread out, more people listen, and those that are unrighteous hate it when that happens to the righteous.

Those that are ungodly hate it when a godly person has their voice up loud. Somebody asked me this question the other day. Why is it if Benny Hinn is such an evil guy, why is it that God allows him to flourish? It's really simple. It's not necessarily God allowing him to flourish, although God does that for his own sovereign reasons. It's the fact that the devil has no reason to attack Benny Hinn because Benny Hinn does his bidding.

Have you ever wondered that? You think about people like that. There's lots of people like him. A lot of these guys don't get attacked, and the reason why they don't get attacked is because they're doing the work for the devil. They're continuing to carry on those purposes. When they carry on those purposes, why are they going to have opposition? Why is it going to be difficult? Why in the world are they going to face any hardship? It's not going to work. I want everybody to understand that.

The crowds want Jesus. They want everything about him. They love him. They want to see what he can do for them. Look at what it says in verse nine. It says, "And he spoke to his disciples that a small ship should wait on him because of the multitude lest they should throng him." The idea here is that probably he's got this boat that's waiting there for him to get in and basically take off because the crowds are difficult to manage.

I always laugh when people will come up to me and condemn me for not making myself available 24/7. I've had this happen before. Somebody will call me and they'll go, "Well, why didn't you call me back right away? Why didn't you get to me? You're not doing what Jesus would have done. You're not Christ-like." I always say the same thing. I'm always a bit sarcastic when it happens. I go, "Well, yeah, I'm not God, so how about you go seek God? He will answer you." I just kind of leave it alone.

The reality of it is Jesus here expresses remarkable wisdom. Jesus is not just showing somebody who's going to kill himself at the cost of practicality. Christ understands the practical solutions to some very, very real issues. The big crowds are there and he's looking for a path so that he can be able to continue to do what he's doing throughout the tenure that he needs to exist to do these things. It's kind of interesting how they're bringing this about. I can picture this. I can picture Jesus kind of shoving off in the boat, standing there as the boat is afloat speaking to the crowds that are just pushing against the shore.

At a certain point, the water will just keep them back. They can't go beyond a certain point. It's a pretty interesting thing. Look what it goes on to say in verse 10. "For he had healed many insomuch that they pressed up on him for to touch him as many as had plagues." Christ was healing many people. In their minds, they knew if I could touch him, everything will be okay. Then I'll get healed and everything is great. That's the kind of faith that they had in him.

I wish we could think that way today. Today, we spend so much time selling Jesus like a used car that we don't recognize the attraction in who he is. The better that we become at showing the world who he is without trying to dress him up the way we think he needs to be dressed up, the more people will be attracted to him because they will see the very same things that the crowd saw that were attracted to him. This took a long time to learn. God doesn't need or want me to be a salesman for him. He's never wanted that for me. He's never needed that for me. The only thing that I need to do is I need to be faithful and true to representing God exactly as he is.

Because if I represent him exactly as he is, people will hunger for him, and it will be him that they will seek after. If you want to know a solid growth plan, give them Jesus as he is. Don't give them the Jesus that you think is a softy. Don't give them the Jesus that you think falls into your character. I laugh about this all the time. Somebody told me recently, "James, you need to just stop screaming when you speak because you're not projecting Jesus. Jesus would have never done that."

I've got two things to say to that person. Number one, you were likely raised by only women and you have no idea what male leadership looks like, which is why your voice is so soft and you want other people's voice to be soft. But here's the second reason and perhaps the more significant reason: you were never with him. You don't know the culture of the Middle East. You don't know how they act, you don't know how they function. You have no idea whether or not Jesus had a loud voice, and I can promise you he did.

There's no way in the world he could have communicated with thousands in an era where there were no microphones in a place where his voice would have to naturally carry. I can promise you he was loud. I can promise you that. It's not a difficult thing to be able to gather. So to come to another person and say, "Well, you're not Christ-like because you're so loud and I just can't stand the sound of your voice"—there were lots of Pharisees and Sadducees that felt the same way.

They came up with an excuse and a reason to not listen to what the Lord was saying. I don't care to become somebody different. I have no desire to do so. I'm not changing. I'm not going to become somebody that I'm not because my only goal is to do one thing and one thing only. That isn't to grow people's attraction towards me. My goal is for me to be a reflection of Christ. When people see me and they want to be attracted, I don't want them to be attracted to me.

If they're looking at me, if they're paying attention to me, that means there's a problem. Think about it like this: if you have a big mirror in your house and you stand in front of the mirror, you will never notice the mirror. You will never notice the mirror itself. You will always look at the reflection. The only time you'd ever notice a mirror is if it is dirty or if it's cracked. If my job is to reflect Christ and people are spending more time noticing me than they are him, then there's something about me that's dirty or cracked.

Maybe it's both. But the idea behind this is to know and understand that my responsibility and my job is to reflect Jesus as he is. I'm not supposed to sell him. There's no used car responsibility. There's no eloquence that I'm trying to draw from. There's nothing like that. The way I speak is the way I speak. The tool of the vocabulary that God has given me is a gift that he's given me, so I'll use it. But the reality of it is I must use every tool that God has given me to show Christ as he is.

Not to make one that fits in with the culture, not to make one that's effeminate. They're trying to make him all kinds of crazy things. They're making him a trans. They're doing all kinds of crazy things with him. The reality of it is you will never truly communicate who God is and people will never be attracted to a Christ that you made. It'll never happen. They'll only be attracted to the true and living God. The only way you can accurately reflect the true and living God is to know him and to continue to share him as he is. It's the way it works. These people were attracted. They wanted him so badly because they knew who he was.

Guest (Male): Thank you for joining us today for Light on the Hill. What you just heard is one part of a study in Mark's Gospel from Pastor James Kaddis. You can hear it again at lightonthehillradio.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Not long ago, Pastor James released his new book on the first half of Revelation. It's entitled "The Last Book." He points out that Revelation isn't a book of fear but rather a book of hope.

Pastor James will help you understand the world we live in and current events through a biblical lens, preparing your heart for what lies ahead. Get a copy by going to lightonthehillradio.com or through Amazon. We're so grateful for your support. Each donation that's sent in is an investment in what God is doing over the radio and internet. Lives are being impacted daily for the glory of God as a result.

If you'd like to stand with us through providing either a one-time donation or ongoing monthly support, please visit lightonthehillradio.com. While you're there, you can also send us an email. It would be great to hear from you and have you share the station you listen to as well. Just visit lightonthehillradio.com and then click on contact. Now let's turn back to Mark Chapter 3 where we left off at verse 11.

James Kaddis: Verse 11. "And unclean spirits when they saw him fell down before him and cried saying thou art the son of God and he straightly charged them that they should not make him known." Isn't it funny? Can you imagine the dynamic that's going on here? I think the dynamic is pretty spectacular. The dynamic is you have these people that are demon-possessed. They see Jesus and immediately they're bowing down, literally bowing down to him and saying, "You're the true son of God." Can you imagine?

The demons themselves bow down to Christ. The demons themselves know exactly who he is. They recognize it right away. They know. Why? Because he's God. It's funny because a lot of people will reflect upon the question that's obviously naturally imposed here, and that is: why is it that these demons are being told not to acknowledge him as a true and living God? There's a lot of reasons why I can think that would be the case.

Probably the first and foremost of those reasons is the declaration that they're making is also going to serve as a very tool to confuse people when they see demon-possessed people proclaiming him as God. The other thing that it could do is it could literally affect the perfect timing that God wants to execute in the circumstance by which people are receiving him. We don't know the reasons why Jesus is telling them not to do it, but the bottom line is they're listening to him because they're subject to him.

The funny thing about demons is you learn two big things about them. If you've ever had any interaction with them, if you ever understand how they work and what they do, you'll understand two very powerful principles about demons. Number one: they are powerful. When you start looking at your own strength and you start looking at your own power, you realize they're far more powerful than you'll ever be.

Greater is he that lives in you than he that's in the world. We know that there is a greater power that we get to lean on who lives inside of us, who takes residency inside of us to give us victory over these things. But here's the thing, going back to point number one: if you know what that looks like, then you will have a natural and very healthy fear for what you're seeing when you see it.

Guest (Male): Remember, you are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Light on the Hill with Pastor James Kaddis is brought to you by Calvary Chapel Signal Hill. I have found that peace only comes from you. I have found the joy only comes from you. I have found that 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. All I need is you. All I need is you. All I need is you.