Light on the Hill

James Kaddis: Coming up today on Light on the Hill. Can I make a pretty crazy assertion that I think is probably right? You know the number one reason why more people who call themselves believers walk around completely broke?

And when I say broke, I'm not just talking about money. I'm talking about broke of awareness of what God has made available for them, broke of their spiritual understanding of what God is doing, broke of even the ability to go to the Lord and ask Him for anything, is because they spend so much time focusing on what they don't have.

That they ignore what they do have, and their very ignorance of what they do have, is the very thing that caused them to meet their demise.

James Kaddis: Hello and welcome to Light on the Hill. Imagine the scene: several thousand hungry people and just a few loaves and small fish to feed them. To some, that seemed like an insurmountable problem, but nothing is too difficult for Jesus. When you seek Him first, He'll take care of all your needs. Today, Pastor James Kaddis is in Mark chapter 8 with some observations concerning this great miracle of Jesus feeding the 4,000. It's a miracle that happens every day, whether we realize it or not.

A couple of things to point out immediately, critically, that every single one of you need to pay attention to, including myself, because it's really important. These are people that desired the greater things so bad that they were willing to risk their own existence.

They were willing to even risk dying of starvation, because that was a real thing, in order to follow Jesus the whole way where He went. They saw their relationship with God and the message of the kingdom as being more valuable than the very food that they eat.

I would venture to say that we would be way more likely to pray and jump on the prayer opportunities if we had the same attitude about the God who loves us and gave Himself for us.

You know what I think is even more hilarious? In a day where we have more food available to us than ever before, in a time where we can access God's Word in virtually every way imaginable, where all of it is so readily available at our fingertips, we seek it out the least, and we indulge more. Is that funny how that works?

We seek out the things of God less, and we indulge in the things of the flesh more. In a time where these people had none of each, they chose to deny their bodies of the sustenance that they desperately need in place of finding what they need for their very souls. Funny how that works.

You have an abundance of everything, your flesh is going to tend to want more. It's going to want to find more, it's going to want to do more. I was just thinking about this. These these different protests that are going on. I think LA County is having some right now as well, where these people are going out in the streets and they're being offered the world by the county. They're being offered so much more money than what the average person on the market is getting right now, and yet they're not satisfied. Why? Because when you give more to the woke mob, the woke mob demands more.

Why is that the case? Is it because these people are terrible people? No, not at all. It has everything to do with the fact that they are reflecting the condition of mankind. The deprived condition of mankind, that when man desires the things opposite of that which God wants for us, man develops a bloodlust for the things that will destroy themselves. That's how it works.

Jesus said, "They have been following me for three days, they've got nothing to eat. I'm going to feed them." I love the way that works. See, God says, "When you put Me in priority, when you when you look at Me, when you seek after Me first, I take care of all the other needs."

I seem to remember Jesus saying something like that, speaking to probably the very same crowd, when He just basically said, "Seek you first the Kingdom of God," right? I think that there's a lot to be said here. There's so much to be said.

Verse 4. And this is so typical of those of us that are spiritually oriented. You know what I mean? Listen to the response in verse 4. And His disciples answered Him, "From whence can a man satisfy these men with bread here in the wilderness?" Wow.

Basically, that was their way of saying, "Jesus, are you nuts?" Show me what world does it make sense that you think we can feed these people with the resources we have here in the wilderness? We've got a few loaves. We've got seven loaves to be specific, and just a few fish. In what world can we feed 4,000 people with that?

I think it's hilarious because although the disciples don't strike me as men who are going out of their way to seek Jesus, I would also concede to the fact that these men didn't feel the need to seek Jesus because they were with Jesus 24/7.

And I would venture to say that for those of us who claim that we are in the know, who walk with God and have a personal relationship with Him, I think it gets to the point where we take our relationships with Him so much for granted that we do not value what He is capable of, nor are we actually effectively able to assess what He's capable of, because familiarity in our relationship with Him has indeed bred contempt.

You become so familiar with Him that you don't view Him as the one that could do the miraculous thing, because He's not viewed by you as the formal. He's not viewed by you as the one who you would go to in fear and in awe and say, "God, will you please intervene?" There's something to be said about this, guys.

The disciples were so enthralled by how crazy of a proposal Jesus was making that in essence, the question that they were imposing almost felt like it was riddled with sarcasm. Now, don't get me wrong. Some people will argue that it wasn't them being sarcastic, and I I would accept that argument. I actually think from a linguistic perspective, you can make an argument that these guys aren't being sarcastic.

But the one thing that I will tell you is if that is true and these guys are not being sarcastic, and this question is not the imposition of a rhetorical nature, that they're actually asking because they genuinely want to know, I would say it's worse. I would say it's worse because these are men who watched Jesus raise people from the dead.

These are men who watched Jesus do amazing, amazing miracles, remarkable miracles, powerful miracles. Think about that for a second. And yet they still questioned how in the world something like this could be done. So, take your pick. Sarcasm, maybe? No matter what picture you you choose to accept, they're questioning God's capacity to be able to do this and His ability. And even worse, they're they're not even questioning it, they're not seeing it as a viable solution. They're not seeing Christ doing it as a viable possibility.

Look what it goes on to say. Very interesting how this goes. And He asked them, "How many loaves have you?" And they said, "Seven." Okay.

I shared this with the men on Tuesday. This is such a a difficult principle to describe to people who are not in the know. We were demonstrated this from the very beginning. The Bible showed us this.

The Bible showed us that God's design for mankind is that mankind would never have lack. That mankind would never be without. This is not a health and wealth message. This is not a, "You should always be rich," and there's nothing like that.

The Bible showed us from day one that God's intent was that His people would have virtually everything. And the Bible has also shown us from virtually day one that when mankind chooses to walk in a condition of depravity, it is because they choose to focus on everything that they do not have or the one thing that they do not have, forgetting about the everything that they do.

Adam and Eve were told by God of every tree you may eat freely. Of every tree you may eat freely. Except one. It's worthwhile going back to how the devil questioned Eve. Let's go look at this for just one second because it's it's a worthwhile observation to make.

And I think it's something that's wise for us to consider because it gives us an awareness of a tactic where human nature is attacked on a regular basis. Okay? But look at this. Chapter 3. Okay? The devil asks this question, chapter 3 verse 1. Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made, and he said unto the woman, "Yea, hath God said, 'You shall not eat of every tree of the garden'?" By the way, did God say that? Did God say, "You shall not eat of every tree of the garden"? No. What did God say? God said something completely different.

Eve responds because she engages in a dialogue with the devil, and she says, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat of it, nor shall you touch it.'" Let's go back to chapter 2 verse 17. Let's look at God's real command. Actually, we'll start in verse 16 of chapter 2.

And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, "Of every tree of the garden, thou mayest freely eat." Every and freely, gone. Every and freely gone when Eve reiterates it. Think about that for a second. God said of every tree of the garden, of every tree, you may freely eat. But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it. What does the woman say?

"We may eat of the fruit of the trees." That's not what God said. God said, "You may freely eat of every tree." You may freely eat of every tree. But the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, "You shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it, lest you die." First of all, God didn't tell you you shouldn't touch it, number one.

And God didn't even present it that way. God actually, if you go back to chapter 2 verse 17, God didn't even say it the way that she said it. God did not say, "the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden." God said, "But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." He named the specific tree.

He made sure there was no ambiguity. The tree itself had a name. Eve said no. And then the Bible tells us that when Eve went to go eat of the tree, this is what happened, verse 6. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat and also gave it to her husband, and he did eat. In other words, she focused so much on what she did not have that in her focus of what she did not have, she was willing to completely forfeit everything that God had given her.

Everything. God told her, "You have everything that you can want," except one thing. So what did she do? She actually started focusing on the one thing. She started focusing on the one thing and she gave up everything for the one thing. That is the same thing that the disciples are guilty of doing right here.

The disciples are guilty of focusing on everything they don't have. "There's no, we can't feed 4,000 people. There's not enough food for all of these people." They spent so much time focusing on the fact that there was no food to feed the people, that they denied understanding some very simple truths. First of all, it wasn't that there was no food, there was some food.

But they spent so much time looking at the food that wasn't available that they chose to ignore the food that was. God didn't go back to them and say, "Hey, you dummies, I'm the God of heaven." "I can make the food." God didn't do that. The first thing that God did, the first thing that God did when He replied to them is He said, "How much food do we have?"

He took them away from the entrapment of mankind, and He told mankind to focus on what they did have, rather than what they didn't. That's what He said. Focus on what you have, not what you don't. I love that.

So they said seven. And He commanded the people to sit down on the ground, and He took the seven loaves and gave thanks and break and gave to His disciples to set before them, and they did set them before the people. And they had a few small fishes, and He blessed and commanded to set them also before them. So they did eat and were filled, and they took up of the broken meat, and that was left seven baskets. And they that had eaten were about 4,000 and He sent them away.

Can I make a pretty crazy assertion that I think is probably right? You know the number one reason why more people who call themselves believers walk around completely broke? And when I say broke, I'm not just talking about money. I'm talking about broke of awareness of what God has made available for them, broke of their spiritual understanding of what God is doing, broke of even the ability to go to the Lord and ask Him for anything, is because they spend so much time focusing on what they don't have.

That they ignore what they do have, and their very ignorance of what they do have is the very thing that caused them to meet their demise.

I talk to people all the time that say, "God would never do this or God would never do that, or I've never seen God do any miracle in my life." And I ask them the same question every single time. "Have you spent time asking God for any of these things?" And you know what they always tell me? They say, "Well, yeah, I I I used to pray for it. I prayed a couple of times." And then you moved on. "Well, what do you expect?" "I prayed, I don't have it, so now I'm thinking about it, I I I'm thinking about other options."

You spend so much time focusing on what you know you don't have that you forget about the fact that what you do have is more valuable than anything you ever thought you ever wanted into eternity. And what you do have is the one who spoke the world into existence.

Stop focusing on what you do not have and spend time focusing on what God has given you. By the way, can I just tell you this right now? If we understood this as believers, we would be better investors with our finances. We would be better users of the tools that God has given us. We would stop thinking about how we could buy the next latest and greatest thing, and we would start thinking about how we can maximize what we have been given to do the very thing that we thought we needed because we don't have it.

I say this every single time, and I mean it. The moment you choose to focus more on what you don't have, that is the very moment that you choose to say, "God, I don't care what you can do because I don't believe it." It's such a terrible, tragic way to look at life.

Parents, you'll appreciate this. Heck, you don't even have to be a parent to appreciate this. You can be anybody. You ever bought a really nice gift that you wanted to give to somebody? You worked hard to buy it, you saved up a whole bunch of money or whatever it was that you did to get them the gift. Then you give it to them and then they go, "Oh, okay. Let's move on to the next thing." They don't even care.

You know, we have a little litmus test when we buy gifts for the kids. If they want to open it right away, then it's a hit, it's a home run. If they look at it and go, " and then they put it aside and never look at it again, then it was a dud, right? Imagine if someone gave you a gift or you gave somebody a gift and they put a lighter to it and burned it and said, "That I don't I don't need that. I don't want it." Would you be more inclined to want to give them another gift?

Would you want to go out of your way to buy them something more? No, you wouldn't. Why? Because they don't care for or appreciate what you've put in front of them. I think God is saying this. I think God is saying, "I've put a lot in front of you." "I've given you tools that you don't even know how to use." "And I want you to focus on what you do have, rather than what you don't have."

Because it creates for you a condition that will always spin you or bring you to a place of failure and frustration. One last great illustration to demonstrate this. When my wife and I moved into the first home that we bought together, this was years ago, my wife had insisted that we go and we get like one of the closets that were in the in this home, it was a new home, set up to get like these special fitted shelves put in there. And I thought, "Oh, this is dumb," but she wanted me to have it because it would help me organize all my hobby equipment, you know?

I said, "Okay, great, we'll do it." So we go do it and I'm like, "Wow, this was such a good call that my wife made." I loved hanging out in that little hobby closet. I loved it because I had my my stool there, I had all my tools, I had all this stuff that I needed to work on things. It was just it was a great little room. And it worked out so perfectly for me. I mean, it was it was so nice. It was it was literally a really, really nice room to have where I could go and just hide out and and get stuff done.

So I I was working on something that involved a little tiny motor for one of my one of my model helicopters. And there was a clip that needed to be removed from the motor. I think I've shared this story before a couple of times. And it was a brand new motor, but I I had done something where I flubbed it and I needed to actually fix it. So I had to pull this clip off in order to get to the inside of this motor.

So I just figured, "Well, that's an easy enough clip. You know, what I'll do is I'll, you know, I'll take like a a weird plier and try to pull it off." And I couldn't do that. I realized, "Oh, I can't do that." So then I tried to take paper clips and put it in there and try to pull it off that way. I couldn't do that. And then I I tried so many different things, including putting a set of cutters to it, so I could cut it and then order the new clips and then buy them, but I couldn't cut the clips.

So finally, about eight hours into messing with it, I decided to go to the hobby forums where all my buddies are. And I say, "Hey guys," and I took a picture of the clip. And I said, "Does anybody here have any idea how to get rid of this clip, how to take this clip off?" Almost immediately, one of my buddies calls me on the on the cell phone and he says, "Dude, right now I'm not hanging up. Right now, take that post down. Take it down." "Why?" "Just take it down. Everybody's going to realize that you are literally an idiot." "Just take take the post down." So, I take the post down.

He says, "Look, you need to go right now to Harbor Freight, or you need to go to this place right here." "It's literally a $3 tool, James. It is a a plier that will open up a C-clip in literally three seconds." "Go buy that tool and hope and pray to your boss upstairs that nobody saw that post because anybody that did probably lost all bit of respect for you." "Oh."