Light on the Hill

Guest (Male): Welcome once again to Light on the Hill. Pastor James Kaddis is in a series entitled "Prophecies That Change the World." There is so much made available to mankind through the finished work of Christ, yet so little of it is used. Today's study in Romans Chapter 8 will show you why and how you can use the greatest of those tools. Here is a hint: it's all about something that happened thousands of years ago.

James Kaddis: All right, I love this passage, and I will tell you why I love it. We kind of have to go back and sort of go through a little bit of a history lesson. I think that will help you understand where I'm coming from when we get to this place. Because when we talk about the subject of Resurrection Day, Easter as many call it, this is not the passage that people think of. This is not where they go. It's the passage I go to every single time and for a lot of reasons we're going to get into in a second. But I will tell you that there has to be a little context in order for you to understand why I say what I say and where I'm coming from when I talk about this.

For those of you that don't know, which many of you already know, many of you are already familiar with this fact, I was raised by a mother and father who were both born and raised in Egypt. I'm first generation into this country. Obviously, Arabic is my second language. What's very interesting when you stop for a moment to reflect upon a bit of my history and where that all came from, I come from a long, long line of very godly people. My grandfather was a pastor in Egypt—that's my mom's father—for 35 years. He was a Baptist minister. My other grandfather, my dad's father, was a pastor in Egypt for 65 years. He was Presbyterian.

It is interesting because when you look at the long line of men that they came from that really loved the Lord, I think I'm probably fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh generation of people involved in ministry. Of course, I'm first generation to do it here in the United States of America. To say the least, I was raised in the ways of the Lord. I was given a good, healthy foundation. My mom and my dad have always loved the Lord. Before they went to go be with Him, they were very dedicated to Him and they were very serious about their walk with God.

My dad was not the type of man that would drop us off at church and then go do his own thing. My mom was not that way. They very much modeled their love that they had for Jesus. They modeled the love that they had for the things of God and the Word of God. So my whole life I had this remarkable upbringing in spiritual things, often hearing the stories that my grandmother told me about many of the things that she did in Egypt. I've heard some extraordinary stories, by the way, about some of the things that she used to do that actually when I talk to my uncles about it, they were shocked that I even knew some of those facts.

Some of the things that my mom and my dad did over the years were remarkable. It was interesting because I went my own way for a little while. When I went through my period of rebellion, I wouldn't even say it was the kind of rebellion that most people would associate rebellion with. I wasn't doing drugs or any of that kind of thing. I wasn't going real crazy or anything like that, but I just pretty much didn't really have any acclimation towards spiritual things for a period of time. That was just part of a decision that I had made to kind of do my own thing.

Of course, when I came to really know the Lord and walk with the Lord, it was at a very young age—right at 16 years old. When I really started taking my walk with God seriously, that's when I really started questioning everything. I didn't question everything for the sake of questioning it or because there was a tone or a taste of rebellion in my questioning. I did it because I really wanted to understand everything that we used to do traditionally. Traditionally in my household, we did lots of things that were very godly, very biblically based.

We did a lot of things that were predicated upon a foundation of godliness and righteousness. When I started getting to the point where I was really walking with the Lord and I started observing these traditions from a different perspective, of course, I questioned them because I wanted to understand them. One such tradition would always happen on Resurrection Day, on Easter Sunday. I used to remember this because the church that I really started walking with the Lord at was Calvary Chapel Downey. I remember in the very early years going to the sunrise services for the first time.

I would show up at the sunrise services and people would come up to me and they would say, "He is risen! Praise the Lord!" Everybody else that would hear these people in the background would go, "He is risen indeed!" It was like they all jumped to be able to respond that way. People would come to me and they would say, "He is risen." I would go, "Oh, all right. He is risen." That is kind of what I felt like in my mind. Actually, quite frankly, I looked at people who would do that on Sunday morning on Easter and think, "You're just giddy, like maybe you've been tipsy."

You actually act like you've been drinking a little bit because these people that I know them personally on their day-to-day lives, they don't act that way. But then I see them on Sunday on Easter, and it was just the way it felt to me. Yes, I sort of was belligerent in that because I just didn't understand it. I have to say this, it was that way for a few years until I developed a real hunger to understand the book of Romans. I entered into a very deep-rooted study of the book of Romans at this time. Little embarrassed here, full disclosure, I was already a Bible college student.

Not only was I already a Bible college student, I had already learned how to read the Greek language. It was one of those things where I was that far ahead in my walk with the Lord, and yet there was this mindset in me that still didn't quite understand it. So I decided I am digging into Romans, I am going for it, and I learned some things in the book of Romans that were so profound that it completely changed my life. Doing that is what caused me to develop this insane love for the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Let me explain. One of the things that I learned in the book of Romans was really important. It was a powerful lesson and it was this: what happens to us when we get saved? You see, there was a question that the book of Romans imposes that is an incredibly important question and it forces an answer. As a matter of fact, it is sort of an original version of Jeopardy in that the answer is given to us so clearly that it forces the imposition of the question, if that makes any kind of sense.

The question is this: does who I am determine what I do, or does what I do determine who I am? The world will tell you that what you do determines who you are every single time. If you steal, you're a thief. If you lie, you're a liar. But the Bible teaches us that who we are will always determine what we do. If we understand it as such, then if we are believers, we will find victory over the type of things that the world cannot find victory over very easily because that's how God operates. When you begin to understand that very fact, it changes the way you look at literally everything.

With that said, let me explain the mechanics of this question because the mechanics of the imposition of this question that's forced to be asked are really remarkable. They center around who you were before you knew the Lord. Before you knew the Lord, think this through: you were a slave to your flesh. You were a slave. The Bible says that there was a part of you that was completely dead. It is interesting when you walk with the Lord, there is a part of you that's completely dead, but it's a different part. That is something that we have to stop and think about for just one second.

This is what happened before you knew the Lord. This is what the Bible describes and boy, is it accurate. Very similar to the animal kingdom in many ways. Before you knew the Lord, your flesh would want something, so it would tell your brain and your brain would do whatever it took to get what your flesh wanted. When your flesh speaks, your mind says, "Yes, Master," and you go and achieve whatever it is the flesh desires, even if it is to your own detriment, even if it is for your own death, even if it is to your own suffering.

Your brain will respond to the desire of your flesh because you were a sinner prior to knowing the Lord. When you came to walk with God, when you put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ—and that is how you come to know Him—something happened. The Spirit of God took residency inside of your body. It awakened something that was dead. It brought back to life something that was completely inoperable. What happened when you came to know the Lord—and this is critically important to understand—is that the Sheriff of the Universe, who now has residency inside of you, now takes on the role that your flesh used to take on.

The Spirit of God now tells you, "This is what you do." Your mind says, "Yes, Master," to the voice of the Spirit of God, and now your flesh listens to your mind. When you think about the phrase "mind over matter" and you begin to think about some of these Hegelian slips—which is a whole other bit of technical discussion that we could have, especially in the realm of philosophy—just understand this. It is critically important that you know this, that you recognize this. It is a completely different world.

Your brain now responds to the Spirit of God and your flesh listens to your brain. It is the true definition of what mind over matter really means. Now your mind will tell your flesh, "No, you shall not," or, "Yes, you shall," but that is a result of a supernatural empowering that can only come from the Spirit of God that would change the way you live. It is really interesting. I remember like it was yesterday, about this illustration I brought up to you guys a few days ago, the very first brand new vehicle that I ever purchased.

It is an interesting story because when I went in to go buy this vehicle—it was a 1999 Chevy Silverado truck—in those days, the salesmen were trained that you had to do a test drive. Because if you do a test drive, the likelihood that you're going to buy the car is much higher. So the guy says, "Come on, do a test drive." I'm there with my dad. We already know that I want to buy one of these trucks, but he insists that I drive this. He has to get one truck out of the way in order to get the truck that I was interested in for me to test drive.

So while he gets that truck out of the way, he ends up putting a massive dent into it because he miscalculates the turning radius of the truck and he puts a massive dent in the side of a brand new, at the time, $25,000 truck. That truck today would be $70,000 or $80,000. But at the time, $25,000 truck. We see this happening and he comes out and we thought, "Okay, evening is over, this is through." He says, "Look, I'm just going to be level with you. I will give you the best possible deal that I can give you on this truck because I'm telling you right now, if you don't buy a brand new truck that's a higher-end truck, then I'm going to lose my job."

"I'm telling you, there is no way. If I tell my boss I put a dent in this truck and then I can make it up to him by saying I sold this car, then it's going to work out." I said, "Well, if the price is right, I'll do it." So sure enough, he gave me an incredible deal on a Chevy Silverado that at the time had an LS2 in it. Any of you guys who know anything about engines, mechanics, and all that, this thing actually had a Corvette engine in it. It actually had the one with the aluminum heads. I mean, it was the slickest.

This had the really sweet engine in it, massive horsepower, everything. I remembered buying it, taking it off the lot, and going up an off-ramp on the freeway. While I'm going on the off-ramp, I just get on the gas a little bit and almost lose control of the vehicle because it had so much horsepower. So I just babied it from that point on. About 200 or 300 miles into just babying it and driving it really slow and being really careful, a mechanic came to me and he asked me about my car.

He says, "Yeah, that thing is incredible. How have you been driving it? Like, how have you been getting used to it?" I said, "Man, I just baby it. I drive it so little." He pulled me aside—and this was a guy who built performance engines—he said, "Whatever you do, especially during the break-in period, do not drive it like your grandma. Don't do that. Whatever you do, get on it. Get on it to the point where you get on it so hard that you're barely going to lose control—don't lose control of it—but just drive it on that border."

"Slam on the gas, hit the brakes hard, be hard on the vehicle." I'm like, "Why? That's crazy." He said, "I'll tell you why. During the break-in period, if you drive that vehicle the way it was intended to be driven, it will perform the way it was intended to perform. If you don't and you drive it around like a low-performance vehicle that is kind of putting around like a golf cart, that engine will never perform right because it never broke in right." You have got to do it that way. It's a very interesting analogy that carries into the way we are as Christians.

If you recognize who you are, it will allow you to understand what you should be doing. Who you are determines what you do. We are saints; therefore, we act as men and women who choose to serve the true and living God. By the way, this is the destructive thing about things like Critical Race Theory today and the lies that everybody is hearing with this DEI movement and everything like that. The idea here that they're trying to teach you is because you are affected, because you've been hurt, because you've been treated terribly, then this is the way you should be acting.

In reality, every single person, red and yellow, black and white, should be reminded that you are a child of a King and of the King, and you are required to act as such. It is a very different way of thinking. So this is such an important principle for me and it was critically important because it caused me to think about things so much differently. Where we go with this is the place where the Apostle Paul finds himself in the midst of an extraordinary struggle. This is a man who was brilliant in every way—perhaps the greatest theologian that ever lived.

When you think about taking original language for example, the Greek language, the most simple Greek that you'll ever find in the Bible is found in the Gospel of John, maybe 1 John, 2 John, 3 John. The most complicated Greek you'll find in the Bible is the book of Hebrews. The Apostle Paul was a brilliant, absolutely brilliant writer. So if you think about the complexities of the mind of perhaps one of the greatest theologians that ever lived, you don't expect to read something like, "The things I want to do I don't do, and the things I don't want to do I do."

That's what he's saying. At the very end of Romans Chapter 7, he imposes a question that, make no mistake, has no rhetorical association with it at all. In other words, he is not imposing a question that does not require an answer. The imposition of this question demands an answer and he is trying to tell us how important the answer actually is. But here's the question that he asks. He says, "Oh wretched man that I am." If I could translate this from Greek to English, let me just tell you what he is basically saying: "I am completely jacked up. I'm a mess. I'm a complete mess."

In modern-day vernacular, what he is basically saying is, "I'm broke and there is no way to fix me. All the king's horses and all the king's men cannot put me back together again." That is basically what he is saying in modern-day vernacular. But look what he goes on to say: "Oh wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" Translated from the Greek language: "Who can deliver me from this death trap?" That is the word that he uses. By the way, it's really interesting. When I was a young kid, I was invincible.

I see that in my precious little boy, two years old running around. He is invincible. I mean, there is nothing that can stop that little guy. He jumps around on everything and he's about all boy and about as much boy as boy gets. You all know what I'm talking about when your young sons are that way. You get the idea. As I grew older, a lot of that began to change. As I became more and more exposed to death around me and I began to see things that really truly describe what mortality really looks like, especially on a human level.

The invincible aspect that I used to carry in my own personal thought life has diminished pretty rapidly. I recognize that my mortality is something that is a reality that I'm going to have to contend with. Now I'm in a place in my life where I recognize each and every single one of us are living in death traps, aren't we? Because every day that goes by we're getting closer and closer and closer to death. That is the reality of it. Many of you have even experienced that. Many of you have experienced near-death type situations.

Many of you have gone and undergone very difficult situations physiologically speaking and you know exactly what I'm talking about. But the Apostle Paul was taking it a step further. The Apostle Paul was actually saying that his body was a death trap even for his very soul, that what was inside of him—his thought life, everything about his insides, the very spirit that he knows will live forever—the body he was living in was a death trap. It was a place that was designed to destroy the very soul, at least in the current state that it was in.

God designed it completely differently but man in their sin destroyed it. But look at his answer: "Who can deliver me from this death trap?" Look what he says, verse 25: "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin." It's pretty heavy. What he basically says and what he describes to us is in essence what has happened. Now the Spirit of God lives in us, He takes residency inside of us, and if we will put our faith and trust in Him, then the next verse is profound.

The next verse changes everything. The next verse completely brings freedom to you in a way you never thought you could experience it. Why? Because look what he says in verse 1: "There is therefore"—that's "therefore" being meaning tying into everything that we just talked about in Romans 5, 6, 7, and 8—"There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death."

"For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh." That's a pretty heavy thing because what does that mean? First of all, for anybody that says the Old Testament is not valid anymore as a result of what Christ did, you are grossly mistaken. You do not understand the Scriptures and your error in your understanding of the Scriptures keeps you from understanding the power that's available to you today.

The Old Testament is uniquely and remarkably valid, especially the law of God. Why? Because Christ would never have the authority to forgive you of your sins or forgive me of my sins if that authority was not given to Him by the fulfillment of the law. Jesus said it: "I didn't come to destroy the law, I came to fulfill it, every jot and tittle." What that basically means is this: the justification that God has to forgive us of our sins comes from the fact that He lived the law of God perfectly. What does that mean?

It is really simple. It means that when you go to heaven, the only way you can go to heaven is by fulfilling the law of God perfectly. If you have broken the law of God at any level, then you are worthy of hell and you cannot enter into heaven. You must go to hell and suffer that effect for the rest of your eternity. So when you go to heaven, what ends up happening is this: Jesus Christ, who lived a perfect life on this earth, never failed, lived it absolutely perfectly, did through the law what none of us could do.

He fulfilled the law of God exactly the way that God intended. As a matter of fact, He was the living Word of God. He literally was the embodiment of all the full encapsulation of everything the law was about. Remember what John told us? He said that the law was given to us by Moses, grace realized in the law through the life of Jesus Christ. It's a very interesting picture. We're not talking about a comparison mechanism that's being deployed to cause us to look at something differently from the way it was originally in one place.

What we're actually looking at is we're looking at something uniquely remarkably substantial. We're looking at something that's completely different from anything we've ever experienced. Why? Because your works don't get you to heaven. By the way, praise God for that, right? If only you looked at the last four hours of this day prior to this Bible study, I'm going to hell already. Like literally, I'm going to hell. That is just the way it is. Right down to the most basic level—even my drive in—I'm going to hell.

Jesus' finished work involves the fact that He lived on this earth perfectly. He did through the law what none of us could do. He fulfilled the law perfectly, which means we take credit for His perfect work, for the perfect life that He lived. That is a pretty remarkable picture when you think about it, folks. He gave us credit.

Guest (Male): You've been listening to Pastor James Kaddis on Light on the Hill and part of our new study, "Prophecies That Change the World Forever." Pastor James will be right back with more. There are a few ways you can listen to today's message or the entire five-part series again. We post all our programs to LightontheHillRadio.com as well as OnePlace.com. You'll also find Light on the Hill on most major podcast platforms like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google.

We also have an app that makes listening to messages easy to do on any of your mobile devices. Just search for Calvary Chapel Signal Hill in the App Store or Google Play. We're thankful to the Lord for the listeners that come alongside us with their prayers or financial support. It helps us do what we do every day. If you'd like to donate to the ministry today, 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. Pastor James is the senior pastor of Calvary Chapel Signal Hill, and we'd love to have you join us for our Good Friday and Easter services either in person or online. For more information, visit CalvaryChapelSignalHill.com. Pastor James is back with us now. There is a lot going on this weekend at Calvary Chapel Signal Hill. Can you tell our listeners about our Good Friday and Easter services and how they can join us online if they live outside the area?

James Kaddis: Yes, we're really excited about these services because again, the whole goal is to glorify Christ and to give you some really solid, tangible pieces of information that will be life-transforming. Transformations don't come without great expense at times, but we want to be able to provide for you an opportunity to experience a real return on your investment, which of course is your time and your effort into understanding and learning the things of the Kingdom.

So you can watch us, if you are not in the area, on livestream. We are very excited about that. You can go to either CalvaryChapelSignalHill.com or you can go to JamesKaddis.com, and you'll find us live where you can participate in the services—whether it be the sunrise service, the Good Friday, or the Easter services. We're so excited. We want to make those available to you, and we will. We're excited to do it.

Guest (Male): You can find out more about Calvary Chapel Signal Hill and our Good Friday and Easter services at CalvaryChapelSignalHill.com. That is also the place to livestream. There's more to come in our study entitled "Prophecies That Change the World Forever." Join us each day for Light on the Hill and remember you are the light of the world, a city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. This program is brought to you by Calvary Chapel Signal Hill.