Light on the Hill

Guest (Male): Today on Light on the Hill with Pastor James Kaddis.

James Kaddis: When God calls us, there are things about the voice of God that you must understand because if you do not understand those things, you will never develop the pattern to not only understand his voice and hear his voice, but you will not develop the pattern or the discipline to act on his voice when his voice is actually being spoken. The one thing that you need to understand about all of this is to know and be aware of and embrace the fact that God, when he calls us to things, always calls us to the impossible. He never calls us to the possible.

Guest (Male): I have found the 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.

James Kaddis: Whether we realize it or not, God shows up on a regular basis. The problem comes when others don't see it or even worse, refuse to see it. When you do notice it, what happens next? What will you do next? Let's give thoughtful consideration to that now on Light on the Hill with Pastor James Kaddis in Exodus chapter three.

Let's jump right in. By the way, the one thing that I want to say is we've already learned some pretty powerful and significant things. Number one, we know that God has called us to engage in the war that we cannot see: the invisible war, spiritual warfare. We know that as Christians, when we refuse to engage in that warfare, we become the first casualties of it. That's a very important principle for us to understand, embrace, and recognize.

The other thing that we have to know, and this is very critical, we have to see this. That is because everything is founded and based in the spiritual, we are never going to have victory in the physical if we do not emphasize the very things that we cannot see. The only way we're going to do that is to develop a discipline in seeking God and putting him first. If there is no discipline in seeking God and putting him first, there will not be a result in the spiritual war that we are seeking to engage in because we're going in blind and naked and quite frankly, we're going to get our butts kicked. It's that serious. I want everybody to understand that because if you don't, you are going to struggle immensely with everything else.

The thing that we learned last week, and we've been placing a special emphasis on all of these themes, is the fact that God works supernaturally in very natural ways. We learned a process that Moses went through that is very applicable for the way we live our lives. Moses allowed an anomaly that took place to become a tool that was used by God to speak to him. He recognized the anomaly, took the time to investigate the anomaly, and the anomaly became a manifestation of God speaking to him.

He recognized who it was that was talking to him, respected the one who was talking to him, and listened very clearly. God called him to something spectacular and something that was incredible. We know that the rest is history. We leave off in the very section where God basically says, "You tell them that it is the I AM who sent you." Remember, we talked about the brilliance of that question that was imposed by Moses. Perhaps the most brilliant question that could be imposed by Moses in the moment was, "Who do I tell people your name is? What do I say?"

The reason why Moses directly imposed that question was because Moses recognized something that many people do not. If you're military background or you have any experience in anything paramilitary, you'll understand it. His question was imposed because Moses knew that what he needed to do could not take place unless he went with the authority of one greater than him. The idea here is that when God speaks to us, we must go in the authority that God has instilled within us because the authority that we have is not sufficient to do anything, but the authority that God has is not just sufficient, but more than sufficient, more than capable to do exactly that which God has called us to do.

There's a thing that we're going to learn today. This is the reason why I'm staying in chapter three. We will finish chapter three today, but I'm not going into chapter four. That is when God calls us, there are things about the voice of God that you must understand because if you do not understand those things, you will never develop the pattern to not only understand his voice and hear his voice, but you will not develop the pattern or the discipline to act on his voice when his voice is actually being spoken. The one thing that you need to understand about all of this is to know and be aware of and embrace the fact that God when he calls us to things always calls us to the impossible. He never calls us to the possible.

God always calls us to do things that are completely outside the realm of what we consider to be surmountable. God will always bring us to a place of insurmountability because he wants us to understand that only he is capable and not us. The more we develop a discipline of leaning on and relying upon God to do the work that we cannot do in and of ourselves, the greater of an effect we will have in being able to not only understand the goodness and the faithfulness of God to do the work that he promised, but the more we will be able to be blessed by the fact that God is working on our behalf, completely understanding and recognizing that it is absolutely not us, but it's him.

I remember many years ago, this is one of my favorite stories. Many of you have never heard this story, but it is an interesting story that I can recall from being faced with a situation where we're growing as a church. We're meeting in the elementary school and we know we need to make some changes, but we really don't have a direction on what to do. One of my board members at the time—he's not a board member now, but he's an amazing guy, a man that I just very much love and respect—I remember when I first met him, he had a small business of probably 50 employees that he had just started. These employees were part-time people.

By the time that he was one of my board members, his business had grown to 25,000 employees nationwide. He was a really interesting guy, very much loves the Lord, just a sweet man. The one thing about this guy that everybody needs to know is that he's an absolute go-getter. He's not one of these guys that will sit by and just be there. No, he's like, "Let's go get it. Come on!" That's his attitude. It was very similar to mine, very type A, very alpha kind of a personality.

Me and him sit down and we're brainstorming one day and he tells me, "James, let's go to City Hall tomorrow. Let's go." So we go to City Hall. This is before we know anybody at City Hall, before we know how the games are played, the politics, any of that stuff. We walk into City Hall and go right into the planning department. We sit down and we meet with the planning people. You need to understand, I know all of these people now very well. They're all wonderful people. As a matter of fact, the head of planning is an amazing lady. She loves us. She's been so helpful to us over the years.

At the time, we didn't know anybody there. We didn't know the council members, we didn't know anybody. We weren't involved. God has changed things quite a bit over the years. At the time, we went and sat down and the planning people said, "Look, there's not a lot of places in this city that's actually zoned for churches. I mean, that's just the way it is." We're an industrial city and it wasn't that they were being mean to us or anything, they were just telling us the way it was. So I told them, "Can you tell us what is available to us?"

That's going to be difficult. We're going to have to look that up because I don't know if there is anything. My board member was like, "No, you're going to tell us right now. You look it up!" He was not happy. So they took this big massive map. It's a huge map. It's one of these disposable ones that they give away to people. They put it in front of us and they said, "We've got the list right here," and they take their little marker and they highlight these little dots around this map. There were maybe eight or nine little dots. I'm not joking. Eight or nine little dots.

What the world is this? These are the only places where you can viably be zoned to do a church? Basically what you're saying is there's no room for us here in the city. They said, "We're not saying that, we're just telling you this is what it is." My board member and I walked away. My board member was mad, he's just angry. He's saying we're going to take them to court and we're going to do this and that. I don't blame him, he's a go-getter. He's one of these guys like, "If it won't work, I'm going to make it happen." We actually were thinking of buying a building that was in the zone for a church, but the city then told us they would take it by eminent domain because they were about to take it by eminent domain if those people didn't want to sell it to them. It's going to be a fight.

So anyway, I just take some time to process it. Two days later, I go before the church. I'm at the elementary school and by the way, my mom is the only one that was in the room laughing when I did this. She was laughing because she's a really godly woman and she understands what it means to take a step of faith. She's a powerful lady. She's with the Lord now. The only reason my dad wouldn't have been there joining her was because he was in the back ushering and he wasn't watching what was going on. He was just paying attention to what was going on outside.

I walked up to the church and I told the church, "Here's a map. Now, if you can notice, there's a few little areas on this map that are highlighted that the city has said these are places where we can plant ourselves as a church." People are squinting and they're looking and people start yelling, "Where? I don't see anything!" Yeah, you're right. You don't see anything because some of you that are even 10 feet away from me can't see those markings because there's virtually nothing on this map that shows us that we can be a church.

But I'm here to tell you as your pastor, within a year, we'll be in our own building and it will be in an area that isn't zoned for churches and the city will welcome us. People were like, "That's crazy." I remember getting in my car on my way home thinking, "What the heck did I just do? What in the world did I do?" Within six months, folks, within six months we were in this building. Not only were we in this building, but the guy who helped us get the conditional use permit to be able to do what we do as a church to this very day was a man who was an openly flamboyant homosexual who was a council member who never wanted anything to do with churches or church people.

But for whatever reason, he loved us and he's the one that not only got us the permit, but when we got the permit and we were getting ready to pay the thousands of dollars for the permit, he lost his mind when he saw that we were going to pay several thousand dollars. He took us downstairs to the clerk in City Hall and said, "You better change this right now. They're a church. Churches are not supposed to get charged for these conditional use permits." It was wild to see what God did.

The point is this: in no area of the history of Calvary Chapel Signal Hill can anybody be able to claim that Pastor James did the work. It was all God. It continues to be God. The reality of it is each and every single one of you need to recognize that the miraculous work that you continue to see happening in your life can never have anything to do with you because you can never do it. It's always God. The issue that you have to ask is how much are you willing to allow God to do in your life?

How much are you willing to recognize what God is willing to do and how much are you willing to yield it to him? What we're going to learn today is exactly how God operates when he speaks to his people, directs them to action, and does the impossible. So pay very special attention to what we're going to talk about today. It's important. It's short what we're going over, but it's critical. Let's pay attention here. We'll pick up where we left off. This is verse 16.

He finishes telling them to tell them I AM. In other words, there's nobody that can be compared to me. You go and you tell them the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the one that did this. But look what he goes on to say in verse 16: "Go, and gather the elders of Israel together, and say unto them, The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, appeared unto me, saying, I have surely visited you, and seen that which is done to you in Egypt: And I have said, I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt unto the land of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, unto a land flowing with milk and honey."

Do you understand how Moses' head has to be exploding at this point? Let's dig into this a little bit deeper because when we read the next verse, you'll have a better understanding of how his head has to be exploding at this point. Because look what he says in verse 18: "And they"—who's they? The people of Israel—"they shall hearken to thy voice: and thou shalt come, thou and the elders of Israel, unto the king of Egypt, and ye shall say unto him, The Lord God of the Hebrews hath met with us: and now let us go, we beseech thee, three days' journey into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God."

I need you to understand how absolute obscene this must have felt to Moses at the moment. Let me give you a picture of what is going through Moses' head so you can understand. In order to understand what's going through Moses' head, you have to understand the history. The history is critical. First and foremost, I want to make this statement: none of what I'm going to talk about is going to matter unless you are dedicating yourself to hearing the voice of God.

If you are not dedicating yourself to a discipline of knowing the voice of God, you are never going to be put in a position to hear God's voice in the first place, thus recognizing the insurmountability of what he wants to do in your life. If you cannot hear his voice, you're not going to know what he wants to do. If you do not know what he wants to do, you will never give him an opportunity to do what you know you can't do, but what you know he wants him to do.

Kind of sounded like word salad a little bit, right? I did that on purpose, by the way. Go back and listen to the recording because it makes perfect sense. The point is this: you've got to understand this. If you haven't gotten to the point where you can hear God's voice, how can you know what he's doing? How can you know what he's saying? Now, some of you might go, "James, much easier said than done. You say you hear God's voice all the time, but I don't hear his voice at all."

Problem is, there's an element in what you do day to day and a significant element. It's one that's important and it's called discipline. Discipline. You see, this is what happens in church. We'll talk about the church culture for just a second. The place where you see this manifesting in church culture often times is in men's advances, women's advances, church retreats, family gatherings, whatever. You get together as a group of men or a group of women or you get together as a group of families and the purpose of you gathering together is to be touched and blessed by God.

Guess what? You have an emotional weekend. You have an emotional experience. You're motivated! Oh man, sometimes this happens when you come to church. I tried to fall asleep in church, but James was so loud that he got me motivated. I'm coming out of church and I'm excited. I'm like, "Yeehaw! Let's go! Let's go, let's do this!" Let me tell you what motivation does. Let me tell you how motivation works.

Motivation will cause you to jump big for the first day. Then the second day you'll jump big, but it won't be as big. Then the third day you'll jump big, but it won't be as big. Pretty soon, by the time you get to day five, you're flatlining. Motivation works for the first week. It's powerful. The problem is motivation does nothing, absolutely nothing. You see, the motivation should come as a result not of the emotional experience; the motivation should come as a result of witnessing the powerful work that God does that comes from the picture of discipline.

In discipline, you are not going to do the boom, big jump, then the little jump, then the littler and the littler and the littler. Littler. Yeah, there we go. Littler. Here it is. Watch this. The disciplined person will do a small jump, the same and consistent every day. Jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump. The disciplined person will allow themselves to be given to a process that over time will instill within them a unique and foundational ability to produce a result because they have conditioned themselves to hear what God is wanting to say.

You can never come to me and tell me that you're doing everything you can to hear God's voice and you don't hear God's voice and you're disappointed because you don't hear anything. You can't come to me and tell me that if you're not reading the Word every day, if you're not praying, if you're not doing the things that condition you to hear God's voice. By the way, can I also say this? If you're giving yourself to impurity, don't even think of telling me that you're frustrated with hearing God's voice because if you're living in a way where you're disobeying God's commands, you're not going to hear his voice. You have positioned yourself to be deaf.

The discipline aspect is what makes all the difference in the world. Parents, we do this to our children, don't we? Think about this. If you tell your child that you have something big planned for them and they're having a problem with rebellion, and you say we're going to have a trip on Saturday and that trip is going to be a great trip, but I require you to do these things obediently every single day. And your child rebels and they don't obey, they don't obey, they don't obey, and all of a sudden the Friday before the Saturday trip they do everything perfectly.

Are you taking them on the trip? You're a bad parent if you do. Why? Because what you demand of them is the discipline of obedience. The discipline of obedience produces a consistency that will not only save their lives one day, but will cause them to become people that are better, who grow in a way where they flourish. That's what discipline is. Now, time for me to brag because I'm the pastor of this church and I have a six-year-old daughter that's worth bragging about for just a second. I'm going to do that real quick.

Don't get me wrong, that girl is a handful. The smarter they are, the harder they are to raise, I'm going to tell you that right now. And she's very, very smart if you know what I mean. I'm so proud of what our children's ministry director is doing right now. She's got this program that she has started where they're basically doing this Bible verse memorization thing and then what they're doing is they're giving the kids this book. There's all kinds of incentives that are created for these kids.

If they memorize, then they can earn Bible bucks and then they can take their Bible bucks and spend it right away on buying little treats or whatever, or they can take their Bible bucks and put it in the bank. It literally teaches them how to be responsible. So my daughter's coming home telling me, "I got my bucks in the bank right now because I'm going to buy something really, really big for my brother's birthday." It's awesome. I just love it. So they give her this book and there's things that they're incentivized to do.

There's this grand prize that they can get if they do a certain group of things by the end of the year. By the way, it's kind of lofty. They want them to do all kinds of stuff. So my daughter comes to me last night while I'm studying for today, and she says, "Baba." Yeah, honey? "Baba, I've already learned all the books of the Old Testament." Oh, be quiet. "Yeah, Baba, I have." So she just goes: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Those are the books of the Law. And then these are the books of poetry, and these are the history books, and these are the minor prophets and these are the major prophets.

And this is why there's—and she's telling me all of them. "Oh and Baba, that's all 39 of the books in the Old Testament and I'm already getting ready to do the New Testament books. I'll be ready for that next week." Did Mom go over this with you, honey? "No, no, no, Baba. I just took the little booklet that they gave me. I've just been reading it a bunch. I've been reading it a lot." Guess what? She doesn't understand it and she doesn't know it, but what she doesn't recognize is that she gave herself to a mechanism of discipline which provided for her a result that is extraordinary for somebody at her age.

If you're not being given to the discipline necessary to be able to know and hear and recognize and discern and understand the Word of God, you're never going to be in a position to hear God's voice in the first place. So I'm making the assumption that you are giving yourself to that discipline.

Guest (Male): You've been listening to Pastor James Kaddis on Light on the Hill and part of our new study in the book of Exodus. Pastor James will be back with more. There are a few ways you can listen to today's message again or hear what you may have missed in the series. We post all our programs to lightonthehillradio.com as well as oneplace.com. You'll also find Light on the Hill on most of the major podcast platforms like Apple, Spotify, and Google.

We even have an app that makes listening to messages easy to do on any mobile device. Just search for Calvary Chapel Signal Hill in the App Store or Google Play. We're so thankful to the Lord for the listeners that come alongside us with their prayers or financial support. It really helps us to do what we do each day. If you'd like to make a donation to the ministry, please visit lightonthehillradio.com. You can also give through the Light on the Hill app.

Start following James Kaddis on X, Instagram, and YouTube. Throughout the week he shares biblical encouragement and videos that deal with current events and Bible prophecy. You may also want to check out his program Countdown to Eternity for more biblical encouragement in this area. You'll find that at countdowntoeternity.com and at oneplace.com. Now let's get back to our Bible study near the end of Exodus chapter three.

James Kaddis: Let's get into why Moses' head has to be exploding. First of all, he says, "Go to the elders of Israel and the elders of Israel are going to listen to you. And then tell Pharaoh..."