Our World Today

➡ Paul, the voiceover for a ministry called Your Daily Bread, discusses the current state of the world, comparing it to the fall of the Greek and Roman empires due to moral decay. He highlights the damaging effects of pornography, which he believes has led to the ruin of modern sexual life and marriage. He urges listeners to reject these harmful influences and instead, walk as children of light, embodying goodness, righteousness, and truth. He emphasizes that believers were once part of the darkness, but through Christ, they have been transformed into light.
➡ If you’re a person of goodness, you follow a path of purity and truth, not being swayed by dishonesty or deceit. This means you’re reliable, honest, and trustworthy, unlike those who live in falsehood. This is the result of living in the light, doing good deeds, and being righteous and truthful. Remember to stay faithful, strong, and keep shining your light in the world.

Hello, my name is Paul, and I am the voiceover for a ministry provided to you by Jim Pugh at God Is Government, called Your Daily Bread. Taken from Christ’s teaching of the Lord’s Prayer, in Matthew 6, verse 11. This is a daily devotion ministry, focused not only on uplifting Scripture, but Scripture that will grow your spiritual connection with Christ. We hope that you receive these devotions to uplift you, encourage you, but most importantly, advance your knowledge base of the Holy Scriptures. Today’s focused discussion will be on our world today. We’re where we were before the light arrived.

We’re back in Greece and Rome. The Greek and Roman culture was literally steeped in the Greek word gumnos, which means naked, only for men, and they participated in whatever they were doing naked. It was marked by debauchery, homosexuality, cross-dressing. Every bizarre, unimaginable thing. There were catamites. There were pedarasts. It’s called You Can Look Those Up. It was the worst of the worst, and it brought about the end of the Roman Empire, the Greek Empire. The fall was profoundly complete. We’re in the same place, the same place. This is not new. This is paganism, pre-Christian paganism.

So now we’re in post-Christian paganism. How do we get out of this without fathers? Kevin Swanson has written a marvelous book called Epoch, highly recommend it, subtitled The Rise and Fall of the West. Let me read you just one paragraph. Over 60 years, the pornography revolution has ruined the American male, ruined modern sexual life, and ruined marriage. Pornography enabled mass isolation, depersonalization of sexuality, and homosexuality by the accommodation of self-gratification. It was electronic technology which mass-produced and fast-tracked the dry rot to disintegrate human society in the modern world. Electronic access to pornography was constant and omnipresent after the smartphone was released in 2011.

Children were corrupted by this technology, as readily as the Greeks had accomplished the same feat with their own children in the gymnasiums. On average, a child first encountered pornography around 11 years of age, and 94% of children were viewing porn by 14 years of age. By 2019, 95% of teens 13 to 17 had full access to a smartphone and pornography, and almost half of them admitted to constantly being on the internet. 80% of American men 18 to 30 were addicted to pornography, admitting to regular use. Overall, Americans increased their participation in pornography from 20% to 65% between 1970 and 2019.

The sheer number of men, boys, and families ruined by this electronic and demonic scourge would be impossible to figure. All that was left to assess was lying in the ashes of Western civilization. That’s where we are, and Satan has done it by attacking the fathers relentlessly, and it can’t get worse than it is. It doesn’t go beyond being a drag queen. It doesn’t go beyond putting a drag queen in an elementary school. That is perversity beyond comprehension. That’s the darkness. That is the present darkness. And now, going back to the text of Scripture, I hope that will help you understand what it means, that we are to have nothing to do with the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but we are to walk as children of light.

So let’s look at this text. First of all, you see a contrast in verse 8, a contrast. For you were formerly darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. You were formerly darkness, now you are light in the Lord. The verb were is emphatic, you were. If you go back to chapter 2 of Ephesians in verse 1, you were dead in your trespasses and sins. I said, the darkness speaks of depravity, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.

You not only were depraved and dead, but you were deceived by the prince of the power of the air, the spirit now working in the sons of disobedience. You were also dead in your trespasses and sin. Verse 3 says, you lived in the lusts of the flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, which speaks of the coming destruction. All four elements of the darkness are indicated right there in that verse. You were that. In chapter 4 and verse 17, you walked in futility of mind.

Verse 18, you were darkened in your understanding. You were excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in all unbelievers. You were marked by hardness of heart. Verse 19, callous given over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness. You were. But please notice, it doesn’t say, you were formerly in darkness. It says, you were formerly darkness. The darkness is the composite accumulation of all the dark people. It’s not that you’re in the darkness as a victim. You’re in the darkness as a contributor.

You are the darkness. Apart from Christ, you are the darkness. You are a contributor. You are a perpetrator. Proverbs 4 19 says, the way of the wicked is darkness. They know not at what they stumble. That, of course, is part of the deception. Second Corinthians 4 4 says, the God of this age has blinded the minds of them that believe not. You’re blinded by Satan. You’re blinded by the darkness of sin. The darkness is a system. It is a realm. It is a kingdom. It is a domain of unbelievers. But the darkness is not separate from those unbelievers.

You are the darkness. You, if you’re a believer, you were the darkness. You were part of the darkness. You made the darkness dark. It’s not that you were a victim of it. You were the darkness. You were the darkness. And verse 3, if you go back in chapter 5 to verse 3, your life was marked by immorality, impurity, greed. Verse 4, filthiness, silly talk. Verse 5, immorality, impurity, covetousness. You were the darkness. You were not a victim. You were the darkness. Your works were unrighteous, your thoughts were godless, and you were under divine judgment.

You were under the control of Satan, who in Luke 22 53 is called Satan’s title is the power of darkness. You were the darkness empowered by Satan, and you were headed in your depravity and your deception toward death already spiritually dead. You were headed toward death and then destruction. And Jude describes that destruction as black darkness forever, which doesn’t mean that hell isn’t going to have any lights. What it means is the darkness has come to hell in the form of the people who came to hell. You are the darkness. You carry the darkness to hell.

The darkness of hell is the composite of all the dark people who make up that place where there are chains of darkness, black darkness forever. We were once all darkness. But back to verse 8, the contrast, now you are light in the Lord, but now everything has changed. Now you are light in the Lord through the Lord Jesus Christ. Because of him, we have been transferred from the darkness. We have been transferred from darkness to light. Matthew 5 14, you are the light of the world. What an incredible transformation. Again, the extreme between darkness and light shows the extreme transformation of salvation.

So there is a contrast, and then there are characteristics. So he says, you are now light in the Lord. You are light. You are a light in the world. You are the lights that light the darkness of corruption, as Philippians 2 says. You are the light. You’re not just in the light, but you are the light. Therefore, walk as children of light. Walk again, consistently. Walk worthy of your calling to borrow the language of chapter 4, verse 1. So what would that mean? What does it mean to walk as children of light? Well, verse 9 gives us the characteristics.

So we go from a contrast to characteristics. The fruit of the light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth. So those are the things that mark the light, goodness, righteousness, and truth. And that parallels chapter 4, verse 24, that when you put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness and truth. Righteousness, holiness and truth, or goodness, righteousness and truth. Same thing. So if you’re a child of the light, your life will be marked by all goodness, all righteousness, and all truth.

What is goodness? Agathos, that’s the name of your great-grandma, maybe. Agatha. Agathos. There is kalos, that’s a word for Greek, and it means good to look at and free from defects. There’s krestos, which means it’s something useful. But this is agathos, which means morally good from the divine perspective. So how do you know when a person is a believer? Because they are people of light, and the light shows up in their goodness, in their goodness. 1 Thessalonians 5.15 gives you an illustration. See, that no one repays another with evil for evil, but always seek after that which is good for one another and for all people.

That’s the same word. It’s just general goodness. There’s an opposite, an antonym back in verse 31 of chapter 4, malice. Malice is kakia, that is general evil. Agathos is general good. So if you have become a child of the light, you’re marked by goodness. Secondly, by righteousness, that is, you walk a path that doesn’t deviate from purity. You’re also marked by truth. No longer are you deceived, no longer are you marked by all the expressions of depravity. You walk in integrity, you walk in honesty, you walk in reliability, you walk in trustworthiness, in contrast to the shallow hypocrisy and falseness of those in the dark.

Colossians 1.10 elucidates that a bit. Listen to these words. So that you walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work. So it’s all goodness, all righteousness, and all truth. That’s the fruit of the light. Thank you for joining us in this exploration of our world today. Until next time, remember to keep the faith, stay strong, and continue to shine your light in the world. To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddess dot com. [tr:trw].