Light on the Hill

James Kaddis: Today on Light on the Hill, what obedience to God can do for you. People who walk in obedience build their faith because they get to experience the result of a supernatural move which makes the insurmountable surmountable. We saw that happening here.

The other thing that obedience does, and this is really important, the other thing that obedience does is obedience brings wisdom into a new field of play. It carries wisdom into the world of understanding.

Guest (Male): At various times in our lives, God may ask us to do something that seems strange, illogical, or impossible. That was the case for the story today on Light on the Hill. A simple request from Jesus was to go get a donkey, but it would require great faith to walk in obedience to God.

They did what they were asked to do, even though it seemed like an impossible task. We'll be encouraged by their response here today. Here's Pastor James Kaddis now in Mark chapter 11.

James Kaddis: Let's talk about what Jesus asked them to do. First of all, Jesus asks them to go into this little town and to loose the colt, the little tiny donkey. Just loose him. He's never been ridden by anybody. How likely do you think it is you're going to be able to grab a donkey, hasn't been ridden by anybody, doesn't have any straps on him, anything?

How in the world are you going to get a donkey to cooperate with you to go to the destination that you need it to go? Anybody that knows anything about donkeys, I'm going to tell you this right now: there's no way. Good luck. It's an insurmountable request. It cannot be done. It is physically impossible.

Even the guys that transport animals today would have to put one of these sheets around that animal and then crane it into whatever transport mechanism they use to get the animal from one point to another. You're not getting a donkey to walk, especially when that donkey is not domesticated. It's not happening. It would never work.

That's the first impossible thing they get asked to do. Second impossible thing, think about it like this: assuming you could even get the donkey to cooperate with you, the price to be paid for stealing a donkey in that world is death. You go steal a person's animal, that's an asset that big, you die because of doing it.

Jesus says, when somebody stops you to ask you, you just simply say this crazy thing—and it is a crazy thing—"I need it because the Lord wants me to use it." You would think of a more sophisticated representation to make, but this is how God works. Think about it like this: God tells them to go do an impossible thing.

Not only does He tell them to do an impossible thing, He tells them to do an impossible thing with the assumption and general knowledge of the fact that that impossible thing will be done by God because He directed for it to happen. Then He makes provision for the consequence of what that impossible thing might actually bring.

If you were under any circumstances trying to steal a donkey and when you get caught by the owners you tell them, "The Lord told me to take it," not only would they consider you a nutjob and crazy, but for sure you would experience the greatest consequence of that theft.

So God asks us to be the type of people that not only do the insurmountable at His request or His command to do so, He also requires us to put our faith in trust in Him through our willingness. That's the better term. Through our willingness, because sometimes desire doesn't line up with willingness or our obedience.

But our willingness to walk in obedience no matter what the consequence may be. Let me add another dimension to this that might make it a little bit more discernible or understandable. God is saying, "Go steal the donkey. Go take the donkey, which will be perceived as donkey theft. Go take the donkey, and when you get asked about taking the donkey, don't apologize for taking it. Say you're taking it because God told you to take it. God needs it." Interesting, isn't it?

Early on when COVID happened and all that craziness was going on, I got called into a city council meeting. In the city council meeting, I got hammered away by a couple of the council members. They were basically saying, "Do you know that what you're doing is illegal? You shouldn't be doing this. This gathering you're doing with the church, this is completely wrong and you're breaking the rules." I said, "Well, first of all, I don't believe it's illegal, and the law is on my side." I kind of left it that way.

Then the mayor at the time says, "Well, can you explain why you're essential? Can you let us know why you're an essential organization?" My statement was, "Oh, I think we have a very deep-rooted misunderstanding here. I didn't come here to get permission from you guys to do what I'm doing, nor did I come here to apologize for what I'm doing. I'm doing what God asked me to do. Last time I checked, I don't have to get permission from you to say what God asked me to do, and I'm not apologizing for what God asked me to do."

Of course, that was when the city attorney jumped in and said, "We can't have this conversation. Let's end this right now." I said to one of the council members, "By the way, you know the reason why the city attorney is telling you to shut this conversation down? Because they're keeping you from experiencing legal liability that would result from a religious discrimination lawsuit because you violated our constitutional rights." Then we moved on.

Here's what happened, which was really cool. Some of the same members of that city council that told us what we were doing was illegal called us a little while later, within weeks, maybe a month of the time that that council meeting happened, and asked us to go help some community members that were really going through some really bad moments as a result of all this.

Isn't it funny how that works? The lesson that you learn from this is sometimes God is going to tell you to do things that are crazy to the world, and sometimes God is even going to tell you to do things that seem crazy to you. But you don't apologize for it. You go, you loose the donkey, you take the donkey, and when you're questioned, you say, "God told me to because He has a need of it."

I think that for us there's a powerful lesson to be learned, and that is the fact that God will detour us from the destination we believe we should be going to. Oftentimes in that detour, He will ask us to do what appears to be the impossible because it is. Then He will grow our faith through watching Him accomplish the impossible as we continue to walk unapologetically in the pattern of obedience to see the maximum effect of His sovereign hand in our lives.

What that means is that we're walking in the darkness, still completely unable to see what's ahead of us, understanding and knowing that God is lighting our path to give us the direction that we need to be able to do what God's called us to do. That's a big deal, isn't it? That's the call of God on our lives and in the moment.

Look what it goes on to say in verse four: "And they went their way and found the colt tied by the door without in a place where two ways met, and they loose him." Isn't it amazing? The extraordinary lesson that I think we can gain from this—and it is a remarkable one, it is one that I think is powerful and I think it's one that must be understood and grasped—is the fact that these guys without hesitation did what God asked them to do even though it was an impossible task.

They just did it. "Okay, Lord, we're going to do this." And certain of them, look at this, that stood there said unto them, "What do you loosed the colt?" Did you notice the one subtle detail that doesn't get spoken about? "And certain of them that stood there."

Imagine you're a disciple. You hear God telling you to do this thing that feels insurmountable, that looks like it's impossible. You know it's going to endanger your status. You know that something could happen and you could potentially lose your freedom. You're not ascending to Jerusalem anymore. You're off in a distant location.

What do you think is going to happen to you in your mind if you walked to take the donkey and there are people staring at you doing it? Ever thought about that? It says it right here: "Certain of them that stood there." They stood there watching this happen. Can you imagine? These men were bold. These men were unapologetic. These men still obeyed God recognizing the very moment that this was something that was irreconcilable in their own minds.

I think that's how God wants us to walk. I think God wants us to understand that there are lots of things that don't make sense. All of my kids do this at one point or another, but I just had a recent conversation with my oldest daughter, who is making some sincere requests to her dad.

She says, "I want this, Baba," or, "Baba, can I do this?" or, "Baba, can I do that?" Sometimes what a faithful father and man will do is he will sit his daughter down and say, or son, and say, "Baby, I know that you want to do this, and one day that day will come. One day you'll be able to do it, but right now I can't let you do it because you have not been prepared for it." Know what I mean?

I can give you examples of this. One day your child will learn how to drive a motor vehicle and operate it safely. Would you let them do it right now even though they want to do it really bad? No, you're not going to let them do that. I'm teaching my children financial instruments right now.

My seven-year-old, I'm already going through how to look at charts and learn indicators and so on and so forth. Will she ever be allowed to make a financial decision in the future? Absolutely. She'll be making tons of them. Can she do it right now? No, she's not ready.

She has to learn how to blindly accept the instruction that I'm giving her, knowing full well that I see the bigger picture and will coach her into a place where she will be at the greatest position of advantage that anybody could be by the time she's 13 years old, 14 years old. But she has to trust that the instruction being given to her in the moment is worth the effort.

This is, by the way, I should point this out, and this is a difficult thing to bring up, this is why we're facing a very lazy generation. This is why we're looking at kids who today are more willing to blame the system and blame the government and blame the current economic status for why they have nothing instead of stopping and analyzing their own actions. What is it that we did or what is it that we chose not to do?

I think that there's a lot of blessings that come with the world of AI and technology and all the things that are available to us, but some of the greatest curses are it teaches you how to be lazy. It teaches you to take shortcuts that you were never designed to take, and as a result, you make of yourself something that God never intended for you to be.

These are the types of things that we're talking about here. These guys, although they did not understand the full implications of what they were doing, they still chose to do it because they recognized the obligation set forth in front of them to walk in obedience. Didn't make sense to them.

Look at what they do: "Just as Jesus told them, and they said unto them even as Jesus had commanded, and they let them go." I love the emphasis that Mark places on this. They said exactly what God told them to say, and the supernatural result ensued.

I am very bothered by people who come to me expecting supernatural results in their life where they're not willing to yield to the supernatural to bring those results. It happens to me in counseling all the time. People come to me, they want advice, I tell them this is what you need to do, they don't want to do it because they don't understand the validity of the instruction being given to them.

Then they come back to me wanting some other kind of magic wand to be waved, wondering why their problem is not solved. I tell them the same thing every time: you're not willing to obey so your problem will never be solved because your problem can only be solved in the supernatural and you will never have that problem solved unless you act in the supernatural.

The willingness to act in the supernatural is fundamentally predicated upon what you do in the natural through your decision to walk in obedience. That's how it works. You don't want to obey, you're not going to get those results. It's a very, very important thing to be able to understand. It's critical. It makes sense. If we don't understand it, if we don't get it, then there's a bigger problem at hand.

I have had the very unique honor of spending time with world leaders in different contexts or spending time with governors or different things like that in very specific contexts, and there's this huge statement that gets made every single time by their top-notch security people.

They say the same thing every single time: "If something happens that immediately affects your safety and well-being, the only thing we request is you do exactly as we tell you to do and do not, do not defer from anything we ask. It might not make sense, it doesn't have to make sense. Do what we tell you to do."

The first time someone ever told me this, I decided to be really funny with them. I go, "What happens if I say no?" "Well, what'll happen is the last guy that I protected when I was in Asia, you'll die." He was serious. He wasn't laughing, he wasn't joking, he didn't have a little smirk on his face. He was very, very intense.

This was a guy that was one of the execs protecting one of the execs at a major corporation. It's very, very interesting to watch the seriousness by which they carry themselves. I think the same truth applies spiritually. You're not going to be able to get the supernatural results that you're looking for if you don't follow the commands issued to you to act in the supernatural as a result of your obedience.

That's the way it works. These guys chose to obey, and what happened? God did exactly what He said. Look at this verse seven: "And they brought the colt to Jesus and cast their garments on him and he sat upon him." That in and of itself is supernatural, isn't it?

Look what happens. This is very interesting. "And many spread their garments in the way, and others cut down branches off the trees and strawed them in the way. And they went before, and they that followed cried saying Hosanna," which by the way would mean "save now."

That's kind of the exhortation. "Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord." I love this phrase. This is so cool. "Blessed be the kingdom of our father David that cometh in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest."

It's so interesting to think about this. These guys are declaring Him to be the fulfillment of the prophecy that was given to King David that we read about in Samuel. By the way, Chronicles also mentions this. But the prophetic aspect of this, although being something that I could spend a lot of time talking about—I could go through the Psalms, I could go through a section of Isaiah, we could go through Zechariah, we could go through parts of Micah—there are so many aspects of this that we could spend a lot of time talking about and they are all critical and they're all important.

But the one area that I want to emphasize perhaps more than anything is the area that teaches us to understand what the supernatural result looks like when obedience is given. That's the thing that's critical here. Now, couple things to note about this.

There's things that obedience always does. First of all, obedience opens up the door for supernatural intervention. Let me say that again: obedience opens up the door for supernatural intervention. Here's the other thing obedience does: obedience opens up the eyes of everybody involved to see the effects of the world that they cannot see.

Obedience opens up the eyes of those who are navigating through a world in which they cannot see. They get to see the effects. Here's a great example of this: electricity cannot be seen. You just can't. You can't. It's impossible. You can't see it. "Well, I can see lightning." Well, that's an effect of electricity.

"I can see an arc." That's an effect of electricity. You're not seeing electricity itself. Now, here's the thing: if you're an electrician and you are told, "Don't touch these things while you do this because when you open up this panel you may see a spark. If you listen to me, all you'll do is see the spark, but you won't feel the effect of it. If you happen to feel the effect of it, you're dead. Understand? You're gone."

So the guy who is the master electrician, when he tells his journeyman, when he tells his apprentice, "Don't do this," the apprentice doesn't die instantly from putting his hands where he shouldn't and guess what ends up happening? He gets to see the effect of a world that he cannot see with his naked eye.

If you're dead, you can't discern anything, can you? If you walk in obedience, your eyes open to see the effect of the very world that you cannot discern or see. Now, why is that an important statement to make? It's an important statement to make because the ability to be able to experience the effect of the world that you cannot see is faith-building.

That brings us to the third item to bring up here, and that's this: people who walk in obedience build their faith because they get to experience the result of a supernatural move which makes the insurmountable surmountable. We saw that happening here.

The other thing that obedience does—and this is really important—the other thing that obedience does is obedience brings wisdom into a new field of play. It carries wisdom into the world of understanding. These guys had enough wisdom to recognize that there was some scriptural precedent to what happened.

These people were able to discern that something prophetic was taking place as Jesus is riding into the city. But it took understanding for them to be able to declare Him as the Messiah. They wouldn't have had that if not for the obedience of the disciples.

The disciples obeyed, and the result was wisdom, knowledge, and understanding. Look at the last part of this, this is very interesting, verse 11: "And Jesus entered into Jerusalem and into the temple and when he had looked around upon all things and now the eventide was come, he went out unto Bethany with the twelve."

This is interesting because obedience—and we're going to find out how this works next week—obedience does something else. It puts into motion the perfect plans and workings of God. Obedience puts into motion or even sets into motion God's perfect plan for the person in whom He instructs.

If you make it your priority to walk in obedience to God, you also set into motion God's purposes for you and the plan that comes into fruition. This by far may be one of the most incredible parts of spiritual warfare that is oftentimes not understood, not discerned, and not recognized.

Guest (Male): This is Light on the Hill with Pastor James Kaddis, and we're currently going through the Gospel of Mark. Listen to this study and more at lightonthehillradio.com. Pastor James's teachings are also available through the Light on the Hill app and at oneplace.com. You can listen to us wherever you get your podcasts as well.

When you have a moment sometime today, send us an email. We'd love it. It's encouraging to hear what the Lord is doing in our listeners' lives, and it's an opportunity to thank the Lord for what He's doing. There's a place to contact us at our website, lightonthehillradio.com.

We've been blessed by the feedback we've received thus far regarding Pastor James's new book, The Last Book. If you haven't ordered a copy yet, we'd encourage you to do so. This guide to Revelation covers the first half of the book, giving you what you need to know about the Rapture and the end times in a clear and concise manner. Request your copy today at lightonthehillradio.com or through Amazon.

If God is leading you to support this radio outreach, there's also a place to make a donation at lightonthehillradio.com. Throughout the week, you can watch our live shows and short videos, many of which relate to Bible prophecy and help you to see current events with a biblical worldview. Look for these at jameskaddis.com. Now with these final thoughts from Mark chapter 11, here's Pastor James.

James Kaddis: I find that in the times where I struggle with the difficulty that oftentimes is associated with the issues that life presents, the most cathartic experience I can ever have—in probably the deepest sense of the definition—is when I choose to walk in obedience even when obedience makes no sense.

There's a certain release that comes as a result of that, knowing that you've given God your very best and now you get to trust Him to do something that you would never be able to accomplish on your own. Let God do what God wants to do in your life, and the best way to do that, the fast track to doing that, is obedience.

Walk in obedience and watch Him do something spectacular. Amen? More from the book of Mark coming up next time on Light on the Hill with Pastor James Kaddis. This listener-supported program is brought to you by Calvary Chapel Signal Hill.