Light on the Hill

James Kaddis: See how to recognize what evil looks like today on Light on the Hill. The most practical way to learn how to identify evil so that you can deal with it when it comes is to recognize who you actually are as a result of the regeneration that's taken place in your life.

If you will learn to understand what God has done for you in His transformation of you, you will be able to understand what it means to identify evil because what comes from within you is now regulated by the Spirit of God and what comes as a result of what you're living gives you the ability to open your eyes to see what naturally comes from the heart of man. It's that simple.

Guest (Male): Evil is on the rise and at times you may find it hard to even recognize. That's because the devil is good at what he does. In Mark chapter seven, Jesus gives us a powerful tool that will help us be able to discern what real evil looks like. Let's learn to discern here today on Light on the Hill. Here's Pastor James Kaddis now in Mark chapter seven.

James Kaddis: Those of us that produce value for the world around us have one major thing in common. We actually have two major things in common. Number one, we value our time more than we'll ever value money. But number two, and perhaps the most significant thing, we always know what we don't know and we know where to go to find out what we don't know.

I love that about the disciples. The disciples know what they don't know, but they also know where to go when they need to find out what they don't know. But look at what Jesus says. This is actually pretty amazing because what Jesus is doing is He's identifying the pride side of their approach. He's identifying something else that's suspect. And this is all going to culminate back to identifying evil. You'll see it in just a minute. It's actually pretty heavy.

Look at what He says. He said unto them, "Are you so without understanding also? Do you not perceive that whatsoever thing from without entereth into the man, it cannot defile him because it entereth not into his heart, but into his belly, and goeth out into the draught, purging all meats?" Don't you know that? Think about it. And Jesus becomes very graphic here with them. And I think that it's correct and He does it. It's not sarcastic, but it's almost like I'm going to simplify it in terms that even the most dull person can understand.

How in the world can you think that eating food is going to defile the deepest, most inner part of your heart and thought life when all it does is go into your system and get excreted out of your rear end? Some people will look at this statement and go, what a condemnation on the Bible and the Creator of the universe not understanding science and how everything you eat affects the heart and so on and so forth. I've heard people say things like that.

When Jesus is talking about the heart, what is He talking about? He's talking about something more consequential and more significant. By the way, He is creating a delineation between the physical stomach and the physical heart here. He is doing that and it's very clear. He's saying when you eat this food, this food doesn't touch your heart. It touches your belly and then it comes out of your rear. That's pretty much what He's saying. It's a more construction method of saying this.

But the delineation that He's creating is also one that relates to the Jewish culture and mindset in how the term "heart" was understood. When you use the term "heart," oftentimes that was also associated with the deepest, most inner parts of your intimate thought life. So what Jesus is in essence saying is He is saying that it is obscene to think that eating a specific type of food is going to introduce evil to the inner part of your deepest thought life. It doesn't work that way.

Now there is New Age philosophy and secular humanistic thinking that says whatever you eat affects your whole aura, your soul, and it touches you. Whatever. There's some Satanic prominence involved in that by the way. And there is something that deals with demonic interaction that can feed into the mindset that's developed in that sort of Christian science approach, for lack of a better term.

But the one thing that I want to point out in all of this is Jesus is basically saying what is physiological is physiological and what is spiritual is spiritual. That's what Jesus is doing. He is creating the bigger delineation, and the bigger delineation is that which is physical versus that which is spiritual. And what Jesus is seeking to do is He is seeking to draw the line between that which we can tangibly see and feel versus that which we cannot. And what He's trying to explain is that which we cannot see is the more important part of the equation, especially in the world that we can.

If you're not focused on that which is not visible, you will never understand that which is visible. There was a guy that I used to ride with as a police chaplain. He was a great guy. I just love the guy so much. He came out of LAPD 77th Division. I think he started in Hollenbeck and then worked in South Central for a long time. He was just a good old-fashioned, hardcore street cop. The guy could find guns or dope on anybody, any time of the day, any hour, anything.

When I first started riding with him, he was relatively new to our agency after he had lateraled, and people had a ton of respect for him. He already had a great reputation. He worked LAPD's crash unit. He was a very, very effective police officer. He always liked me riding with him. He always said, "Hey, come on Chappy, let's go." So I'd get in the car with him and I loved riding with him at night because he had these weird super bionic powers. That's what I called them. I'm like, how in the world can you see that?

So this was something that he would do a lot. There was a park that was on the east end of our city, probably east-central part of the city, that at night was the best place to go run away into because you would run into what looked like just stark darkness. And then they could, whenever everything calmed down, you could just jump in the riverbed. And it was a type of darkness where if you put your police spotlight on there, the spotlight would tunnel. It wasn't like it would spread because it was so dark.

So when I would ride with this guy, we'd get out of the car if we knew that a suspect had just run. And jumping out of the car, he would every single time, without me even knowing what hit me, he would grab his radio, say I'm in pursuit, give a suspect description, and I can't even see him running. I would stand there literally sometimes with a shotgun in my hand just looking around concerned about my safety because I'm standing in a park that's so dark the only thing that I can see is the white rooftop of the police car.

One time I got fed up with it because I watched him do it 15, 20 times. I'm like, how in the world do you do this? Like how in the world can you see something like this? "Oh come on Chappy, you can't see it when I do?" No! I'm blind! I got glasses but that doesn't help me. He says, "This is what you do, James. When people want to find something, what they oftentimes do is they look for the brightest part of the direction that they're looking."

He says, "What you need to learn how to do, and it's going to take some time, but you need to learn how to look into the parts that you can't see. People look towards light because they want to be able to use the light to see what's going on, but if you spend time focusing on the thing that's invisible, in other words the darkest part, the shadows from the movement will become very obvious to you." No way, baloney. Next time, let's try.

I got to the point where I got pretty good at being able to find things in the darkness because I can't really explain it, but it is a really incredible tactic. I've always had this theory and I think I'm right. God allows the properties that we see in physics, the properties that we see in science, to be a direct mirroring of principles that we understand and know in the spiritual realm.

Because there is a physics-based principle that drives the counsel that he gave me. And what in essence Jesus is telling us is that when you see something happen in a realm that you experience with your senses, do not be deceived by focusing in that area; rather, be focused on the thing that matters, which is the thing that you can't see. Well James, how does that work? How does that even make sense?

Well Jesus is about to explain it. "That which cometh out of the man, that defileth him." Okay, what does that mean? "For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within and defile the man."

Now this is really interesting. What Jesus is teaching us here is something that spits directly into the face of what the world counsels us. What does the world tell us? When we're born, we're born basically good. We're born, the basic core of a human being is to want to do the right thing. We're all born good. That's not true. We're born in a condition of complete and total depravity. That is not a bad word to use. We are born in a sinful state. We are born in a sinful condition.

When we seek to identify evil in anything, the habit that we tend to have is to recognize what is wrong on the premise of what feels unnatural or what feels out of place. As a matter of fact, we oftentimes associate the term discernment with being able to feel a disruption in the force, if you know what I mean. I would venture to say that one of the true ways to identify evil is to recognize what feels more natural to man than what doesn't.

Think about that for a second. Really process that. Where is my natural tendency? My natural tendency is to lie. My natural tendency is to cheat, to steal, adulterous actions. Look at the description of the things that come from within. Evil thoughts. When you have an evil thought, can anybody raise their hand if this is true? When you have an evil thought, does it strike you as something that is so foreign that you're disturbed by the fact that you had an evil thought?

Most people would say no to that question. Why? Because we've had them from the very beginning. Now I do think we can get to the point where we have an evil thought because we're so dedicated and yielded to the Lord that we recognize it for what it is and instantly respond based on what we know is going on. But what is natural to us, what appeals to us, is evil.

I always used to joke about this when the big Titanic movie came out years and years and years ago. I don't even know how long ago it was, 20 years ago, 25 years ago. When that Titanic movie came out, I used to tell this to people and it never made sense to them. They didn't understand it. They looked at me like I was some five-headed beast.

But I would say think about that movie. Now my understanding is because I never watched the movie, my understanding was it was a four-hour movie. And so I told everybody, I said think about this. Everybody was enthralled for four hours of watching a group of people glorifying and making natural fornication, adultery, anger towards the God that spared them and saved them, and it sort of, for lack of a better term, minimized the brevity of eternity and the entrance into eternity.

As a matter of fact, there's one interesting touch that I know of at the end of the movie where this woman in her 90s comes back to the same place where the Titanic sank and begins to have fond thoughts of the moment that led up to the destruction of the Titanic when she spent in adultery and fornication with the person that she was with.

This is the very thing that becomes natural to man. This is the very thing that is a normal part of us. This is why being born again is such a significant and consequential principle to be able to understand because being born again means you're able to understand what is natural to the heart and the mind of God versus what is natural to the heart and the mind of mankind.

But look at the things that come naturally for man. Look at this. Evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders. I mean, how many of you have been angry with anybody? Everybody, right? How many of us have been angry at somebody today? How many of us have been angry at somebody in the last two hours? Come on! My kids! No, I'm just kidding. But think about it. It's a real deal.

That's what murders are, thefts. Has anybody in this room ever stolen? Every single one of you has. It might not be grand theft auto, it might not be a pen from somebody or something like that. But if you have taken away the ability to give glory to God, you've stolen from the Lord, haven't you? You've stolen His time. You've literally stolen His time from Him. You've stolen His glory.

We've all stole, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye. Boy, that's one that I get a lot. An evil eye, we all know what that looks like. Blasphemy, pride, foolishness. Let me read the last verse here. All these evil things come from within and defile the man.

The summary is that within the natural context in which we live, you are never going to find that which is pure. You're never going to find that which is righteous. You're never going to find that which is good. Which is why you must rely upon the Spirit of God to change what is within before you can even focus on what comes out.

Until the Spirit of God enters into you and regenerates you, the ability to understand evil as it sits in this world will be completely removed from you. Now here's the thing you have to understand, and this is where you learn how to identify evil, and yes, you learn it from a passage like this. The most practical way to learn how to identify evil so that you can deal with it when it comes is to recognize who you actually are as a result of the regeneration that's taken place in your life.

What Jesus just finished doing here is explaining to you that evil comes from what is natural in the man's heart. That's the case. What a man chooses to do because of what is generated in his heart is where the true root of evil comes from on so many levels. So the only way to defeat that is to allow God to regenerate you number one, that you be changed from the inside out, but then to recognize what the characteristics of that regeneration are all about.

If you will learn to understand what God has done for you in His transformation of you, you will be able to understand what it means to identify evil because what comes from within you is now regulated by the Spirit of God and what comes as a result of what you're living gives you the ability to open your eyes to see what naturally comes from the heart of man. It's that simple. The idea here is a premise that is built upon something completely different.

Can I give you one practical example of this? It's a really simple example. It's very practical. Here's the example. When somebody comes to me and they're telling me that they're struggling with addiction of any sort. The most common struggles that people have oftentimes when they come to me and look for counsel is they're addicted to pornography, they're addicted to alcohol, it's something like that. Alcohol seems to be the one that has the greatest hold on people besides pornography. Pornography's number one.

But anytime I deal with somebody who's dealing with an addiction at that level, the first place that I go to is teaching them who they are. Once I teach them who they are, only then will they understand what's available to them to overcome. Because when you teach them their identity, only then will they know what they are no longer naturally prone to.

And if they know that, then they will find victory because what the Bible teaches us is what we do does not determine who we are; rather, who we are determines what we do. So the idea here that we're pursuing when I'm counseling somebody dealing with this is I'm reinstituting within their minds and their hearts an awareness of who God has made them and what their identity is, both on a functional and relational level.

That knowledge alone is enough to regulate what they are able to take in and what they're able to not, what they're able to do and what they're able to not do. That in essence what they're doing is they are looking into the invisible. And when you look into the invisible, you will never be guaranteed to see the invisible. But because you're looking into the invisible, you're aware of what you can't see and you default to relying upon the person who can guide you in the area that He can see. Makes sense?

If my focus is on that which is physical, my natural tendency will be to lean on my capacity and my ability to maneuver through the issue, which will then lead to the condition of the heart that Jesus is speaking to. But if my natural tendency is ignored and my instinctual reaction is to go to the area that I cannot see, thus forcing me to rely upon the Lord in doing so, it completely changes everything.

One last way to describe this. I have talked a lot about one of my friends who's an F-15 pilot who's probably the premier expert on airplane safety, aviation safety. We talk a lot about what we call VFR conditions versus IFR conditions. VFR conditions means you're able to visually see something. There's a whole thing behind that. When you're looking at something visually, it's very different than when you can't see something.

IFR conditions is when you are literally in a situation where you can't see anything. One of the most dangerous things that pilots fall into is not being truly aware of the fact that they are in an IFR condition and they continue to rely upon their visual capacity to cause them to navigate and they end up dying virtually every time. Spatial disorientation, that's what it does. That Philadelphia crash that happened where that plane just went right into the ground, that was spatial disorientation.

Here's the rule when you're flying IFR. When you're flying IFR, you know and you're keenly aware of the fact that you can't see anything. So what are you doing? You're heavily relying upon your instrumentation to guide you in what you cannot see. If as Christians we continue to become aware of the fact that we must stay in the realm that we cannot see, it will always force us to go into IFR mode.

We will always look for the instrument flight condition and the tools that navigate us through it. If you are able to recognize it as such, you'll also be able to say, Lord, I'm leaning on You. Here it is. Show me how to navigate through. Amen? Father in heaven, we just thank You, Lord, for Your Word and we thank You for the powerful and beautiful insight that comes from knowing Your Word and understanding and discerning it, Lord. We pray, God, that You would fill us with Your Spirit. We pray that You would keep us close to You, seeking You, walking with You, Lord. We love You, Father. Go before us now and we just ask these things in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

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.

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Pastor James, as you know, Isaiah prophesied that there was coming a day when there would be those who will call good evil and evil good. Aren't we seeing that play out right before our eyes in today's culture? Do you think one of Satan's strategies is to blur the lines and bring confusion in this area of what's right and wrong?

James Kaddis: It's interesting that you would say that. I think we're going beyond blurring the lines here. I think blurring the lines was something that was used many, many years ago, maybe as long as 50 or 60 years ago. But what the enemy is doing is what Isaiah is actually condemning. Isaiah actually says, "Woe to those that call good evil and evil good."

What's happening is Satan is recreating the lines and he is allowing people to feel definitively well about something that's inherently evil. And that's why learning the Bible, knowing what the scripture says, developing an awareness of God's Word will give you the sobriety necessary to defeat the nefarious action of the enemy when he seeks to create these lies that are deeply damaging.

Guest (Male): Well said, thanks Pastor James. 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.