Light on the Hill

James Kaddis: I didn't adopt my children so that they could be exploited. I didn't adopt my children so that they could have parents that are not present in their life. The reality of the situation and the circumstance in which we sit is that the way that we raise our children always gives us insight in the way that God holds fast with us.

I have learned over the years that understanding God's judgment is so spectacularly important in order for my relationship with God to grow and increase. We get into this. Exodus, by the way, in this section with the plagues, is perhaps one of the greatest demonstrations of this principle that you are ever going to see. It is such a remarkable demonstration of this principle, and I'm going to tell you this right now: your lives will be changed.

Guest (Male): Today on Light on the Hill, Pastor James Kaddis says to be careful what you choose to worship because God will let you have it. And when you get it, you'll wish you never got it. Why is that? Because anything you choose to worship that isn't the true and living God will eventually destroy you. Exodus chapter 8 with Pastor James Kaddis begins now.

James Kaddis: All right, folks. I have to just tell you this because I think that this is a really important preface before we get into this passage, and that is discussing for just a moment what we talked about last week. If you were not here last week or did not see the Bible study, I would recommend that you go online and listen to it because the fundamental issue that we discussed that prepared us for what we're going into this week is the fact that we grow closer to God by understanding, experiencing, knowing, and walking in His judgment.

People look at that and they go, "James, that's a bit twisted and it seems somewhat sadistic because how can we grow closer to the Lord when we experience His judgment? How can we grow closer to the Lord when we experience His discipline?" I will just tell you this right now: if you are a parent worth your dime, then you will understand this principle. This is not a difficult principle to understand.

I have to tell you something, and I don't want to tell anybody how to do their job or anything like that, but especially as a father, I am more conscious of this than any other time in my life. I will say that if you are a parent that is giving your child an iPad to keep them at bay, you're destroying their minds, especially when they are at a young age.

If you want to destroy them neurologically speaking, hand them an iPad, hand them a phone, let them play a game at two, three, four, five, or six. The other day I just met a child. I saw a child, eight years old. I kid you not, I thought that the child had autism. I thought he was on the autistic spectrum until I realized that he was a child that was simply being babysat by an iPad.

The problem that erects from a parent who does that is that it is oftentimes a parent that also provides no boundaries for their children. Children—forgive me for saying this—children love to be disciplined whether or not anybody wants to admit it. I think the number one word that I tell my children on a daily basis is "No." I think the secondary word that I say is "Stop."

The reality of it is, when you allow your child to get away from being babysat by the thing that destroys their minds and their hearts, then you allow their imaginations to work the way God intended for their imaginations to work. Children very quickly, from as young as the age of two years old, will recognize that their imagination is a scary thing. It can create real problems for them if they are allowed to run that imagination unchecked.

For example, I'll give you a great example of this. My two-year-old comes up with the most strikingly crazy things to do. I think destruction is built into my children's heart, especially when they're a boy. Oh my goodness, don't tell me that there are not differences between boys and girls. You don't have to teach them any of it. It's unbelievable.

Here's a funny thing that's really interesting about my son. My son will destroy anything that he can get his hands on because it's fun until he realizes it's not. There are times where he'll do something and he'll be absolutely scared that he just did it, and the fear that overwhelms his heart as a result of making that decision causes him to think differently about what he does.

This is like me psychoanalyzing my son, but I want you to understand what this means because my children recognize very quickly that they love being given boundaries. They love to be disciplined, they love to experience the judgment of their mother and father because they know that with the boundaries that are given to them that are not created by some geofencing that's by an iPad somewhere, that when they are being given boundaries, their imaginations are allowed to run as wild as they want to run.

They know that if they function within the guidelines and the areas, the wise constraints that Mom and Dad give them, then they know that they cannot be hurt. They begin to get comfortable working within those constraints, and by the time they begin to get older, there's a conversion process that happens in their mind.

When they begin to get older and old enough to realize they're thinking for themselves now, they're not really under the kind of authority of their mom and dad that they used to be, at least at the level that's more requisite with their age, they now begin to look at where Mom and Dad got those constraints. They want to know how Mom and Dad came to those conclusions. They want to know why Mom and Dad were so wise at the moment that they were to stop the things that they stopped, and then they begin to realize something when they get a little bit older.

They realize that the wisdom that Mom and Dad has really had nothing to do with life experience, and it had a whole lot more to do with the relationship that they have with Christ. Then you begin to realize something even more spectacularly, and I'm talking from personal experience and understanding biblical precedent: you realize that not only did Mom and Dad have a certain amount of wisdom to create the restraints that kept me safe and actually caused me to grow and to do well, you begin to realize that those constraints that they were able to inflict within my particular situation was ordained by God and is a function of godly wisdom that comes as a result of being close to God because you understand His judgment and you know how it works.

The bottom line is this: if we study the judgment of God, we will always come closer to Him. We'll always understand our Father more. We'll always become more tied into Him. We'll always be more joined to Him. Folks, I'm going to tell you this right now: when Dad comes home, when Baba comes home, I am not the party guy. When Baba comes home, I am the more strict "Hey, stop," that's me.

But here's the thing that's really interesting: nowadays especially, when I pull into the driveway, it's my favorite part of the day. First of all, I have to turn on the camera in my car because I can't see little people. And number two, I have to go really, really slow because every now and then my kids will disobey Mama, break open the door, and run out to Baba because they're so excited to see Baba. They love it. They do the same with Mama when Baba is with them and she's gone.

The point behind what I'm trying to say is the more constraints you provide for your children under the auspices of godly instruction, the closer your children will become to you. The more they will learn to love you. The more that they will become the individuals that God has called them to be because they recognize that Mom and Dad didn't function out of frustration and anger. Rather, they recognize that Mama and Baba always functioned from the perspective of a love for them, which was fueled by their love for God.

I don't know about you, but I didn't adopt my children so that they could be exploited. I didn't adopt my children so that they could have parents that are not present in their life. The reality of the situation and the circumstance in which we sit is that the way that we raise our children always gives us insight in the way that God holds fast with us.

I have learned over the years that understanding God's judgment is so spectacularly important in order for my relationship with God to grow and increase. We get into this. Exodus, by the way, in this section with the plagues, is perhaps one of the greatest demonstrations of this principle that you are ever going to see. It is such a remarkable demonstration of this principle, and I'm going to tell you this right now: your lives will be changed.

Look at how much we can learn from just the story of the frogs. Let's get into that really quickly. Verse one says this: "And the Lord spake unto Moses, 'Go unto Pharaoh, and say unto him, "Thus saith the Lord, 'Let my people go, that they may serve me.'"'" I want to stop right here in verse one because verse one should automatically be blaring in your head. It should be blinking and just yelling in your mind because it tells us something that's very important.

It tells us that God, when He judges, before He executes His judgment, God will warn you again and again and again. He will sound like a broken record. He will put something in front of you again and again and again. He will give you sign after sign after sign. He will warn you again and again and again. He will tell you. He will say, "Pay attention, pay attention."

What's really funny is by the time somebody experiences the judgment of God, they will have already been warned so many times that it sounds like a broken record, and they literally will have had to have completely hardened their heart against God. Again, God is going to Moses and telling Moses to go to the Pharaoh and tell the Pharaoh something that he has heard at least ten times before. He's said it again and again: "Let my people go, let my people go, let my people go."

Look at the pattern that God has set throughout the course of the Scriptures. God never, ever executes His judgment without warning people that His judgment is coming first. This is His MO. This is the way He works. Look at what happened in the story of Noah, might be one of the most spectacular stories ever given to us in the Old Testament. When you think about that story, God told Noah, "I'm going to judge the world. I'm not going to be striving with the world anymore. I'm going to destroy them. So guess what? Build this ark."

How long did it take for Noah to build the ark? Seventy to 100 years. At the bare minimum, it would have been 70 years. Do you know the people of the world would have walked around and said, "He's a cuckoo, he's a cuckoo, he's crazy" every single day that Noah was building that ark? That ark stood as a symbol of God's judgment. God warned them every single day. What did the people do? The people eventually turned around and they lost their lives because they ignored the warning of God's impending judgment.

But here's the thing you need to understand: what was the symbol of judgment to the rest of the world that perished was the great symbol of salvation to those that listened to the warnings of God. If you are a child of God and you hear the warning of God being given to you, the warning of God will always be comforting, just like I explained my children find comfort in having wise constraints that keep them from going in a bad direction.

You will learn to find comfort in the warnings of God that will prevent you from experiencing the consequence of your own sin. We've seen this happen to us time and time again. God has warned us again and again. He's told us, "This will happen, this will happen, this will happen." Every single time, every single moment that goes by that we ignore Him, all we are doing is welcoming the destruction that comes as a result.

God's judgment to us, God's warnings to us about His judgment, should be comforting. It should be something that inflicts peace upon us. It should encourage us because when we receive those warnings, that is God basically saying, "I don't want to do this to you, so stop." It's God's way of saying, "I want to bless you, and I will bless you if you choose to listen to the instruction that I'm giving you."

When you see this first verse, don't blow past it. Every single time you read verses like the ones that you are reading in the next few chapters where God says, "Let my people go," let that be a reminder to you of the comfort that should come from the warnings that God gives prior to the judgment that He executes. Do not blow those verses off. They're critical.

Look at what it says in verse two: "And if thou refuse to let them go, behold, I will" what? "I will smite thy border with frogs." By the way, can I just also say this: God is so good at also telling us what He's going to do if we don't listen to His commands. He's very faithful in doing that. He's so good.

He did that with this country. Do you understand that God was warning us for years and years of His judgment? He told us, "It's coming, it's coming." Do you know that when President Trump became the president in 2016 or after the 2016 election, do you understand what happened? We began to be excited and blessed by the change that was going on in our country. We were so blessed by the fact that the economy was growing and all kinds of things were happening. We were supporting Israel, and really wonderful things were going on.

In the meantime, God was warning us. God was saying, "You're embracing sin more than you've ever embraced sin." God was saying, "Things are going down a very dark road. Be careful. Don't go in this direction." Folks, I was at a conservative gathering. I'm not going to walk on eggshells when I say this. I was at a conservative gathering during that time. I was with my wife and my daughters. We were asked to not be put in a place of prominence; we wanted to sit in the back because we had children. They put us in the VIP seating. I'm literally the distance between this post and where I am right here, I'm talking to Ken Starr, okay?

I'm telling you this right now: as I'm at this conservative gathering, everybody at this gathering is drunk out of their minds, including the pastors, including some Calvary Chapel pastors. Drunk out of their minds to the point where they're not even conscious of the things that they're saying or doing. The only people that are not drunk and the only people that are not drinking is the guy that's hosting the whole thing that invited us and his wife and Greg Denham and Stephanie Denham, who don't drink at all—Calvary Chapel pastors, really great people, by the way. That's it. My children... it was crazy. They must have spent $100,000 in the alcohol that it took to liquor up all these conservatives. Conservatism without God is literal hell on earth, just like leftism is.

When you think about it, let me just make myself very, very clear: God was warning us during that time. God was saying, "Don't be comfortable in your sin. Walk in holiness. Regard the Lord. Understand that He's the one that has blessed this country. Know that your freedom came from Him. Freedom was God's idea. Worship God. Don't use God as your footstool to become more famous. Don't let Him be the tool that you use to gain notoriety. Worship Him. Humble yourself. Walk with Him."

They didn't listen. So what did God do? God gave us Joe Biden. I'm not saying that to be funny. God said, "You chose to forget My name, so I'm going to give you a president that won't remember his name." I'm not saying it to crack a joke, although it's kind of funny and sad at the same time. Let me make myself very, very clear: the judgment that we've experienced over the last four years has been the result of Christians ignoring the warnings of God.

Here's the thing that's really interesting: God, just like Nebuchadnezzar, did something remarkable. You see, Nebuchadnezzar was allowed to run around like a wild animal eating grass for seven years, and after that seven years, what did God do? God allowed him to snap out of it and get the kingdom back. God showed His grace in this last year. God protected President Trump from being killed in Pennsylvania. God gave the United States of America another reprieve after everybody walking around insanely insane. "Boys can get pregnant." I look like I can get pregnant, but I can't get credit for it. The craziness of people.

God's given us something back. The obligation does not sit with people like President Trump. President Trump is a cultural Christian at best. I don't think he's born again. I'm grateful to the Lord for him. I think he'll go down as one of the best presidents we've ever had. But the reality of it is, it is incumbent upon the believers to take advantage of the new opportunity that God has given us. When they say there's another pandemic, that we continue to meet. When they continue to try to remove the message of the gospel, that we get louder. We have to. God's given us the reprieve. He's given us another chance. We have to act on it.

Look at what this goes on to say: "If thou refuse to let them go, behold, I will smite thy border with frogs. And the river shall bring forth frogs abundantly, which shall go up and come into thine house, and into thy bedchamber, and upon thy bed, and into the house of thy servants," notice this, "and upon thy people, and into thine ovens, and into thy kneading troughs: And the frogs shall come up both on thee, and upon thy people, and upon all thy servants."

This is really interesting because this is how God works. I just talked about this with our nation. God said, "You want it? You can have it. You want sin? You can have it. Let sin take its course. Let's see how it leads to the exploitation of children in libraries and schools. Let's see what it means when we now begin to give rewards to people who are molesting children instead of putting them in jail. Let's just see what happens when the world begins to change, when men do not even know or understand the most basic distinctions, XX and XY. Let me show you what that all means. Let me help you to understand."

I've been called every kind of crazy thing in the book. You know the favorite one that I've been given? I've been given the title of "white supremacist." That's my favorite one. I'm a white supremacist. Yeah. First generation born into this country to African mother and father. Egypt is an African country. Understand that for just a second. Not that I care about immutability. Give me a break. Since when does immutable characteristic determine my moral authority? What an absurd and obscene way of thinking. Because of the color of my skin, I stand with greater authority? Hogwash. It's a lie from Satan. It's a big, fat, ugly, racist lie that a bunch of brainwashed people are continuing to believe because they've embraced a god that completely hates them. They worship the god of this world. That's why we get what we get here. It's really, really ugly.

So, God does it. He says, "You want it, you can have it." Let me explain why we see this principle being given to us right here. The Egyptians worshiped frogs. I want you to understand that. Do you understand that the Nile River was a sacred place? As a matter of fact, some of the ancient Egyptian practices that we still see, especially in areas of Upper Egypt—the southern portion of Egypt—it's funny they call it Upper Egypt, it's really the southern portion, and Lower Egypt is the northern portion—but especially in Upper Egypt, these people that gather around the Niles, they are ancient. They practice evil, ancient, deep demonic practices, and they worship the Nile. One of the elements of the Nile that they worship is frogs.

These people worship frogs and God said, "You want it? You worship those frogs and you say you don't know Yahweh? You say you don't know the God of heaven? You say that you don't know His name, so you won't listen? Okay, have the frogs. Go ahead."

Look what happens. Verse five: "And the Lord spake unto Moses, 'Say unto Aaron, "Stretch forth thine hand with thy rod over the streams, over the rivers, and over the ponds, and cause frogs to come up upon the land of Egypt."'" And Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt, and the frogs came up and covered the land of Egypt. Notice this: "And the magicians did so with their enchantments, and brought up frogs upon the land of Egypt."

Can I just say this, let's say it all together, you ready? At the count of three, you might not know what I'm about to say, but you'll catch on. One, two, three...