Daily Devotional For Monday, September 9, 2024
Good morning and it is back to work or back to school or both for some of you. We are making our way through the most famous and best sermon ever – Jesus’ Sermon On The Mount. We are currently in Matthew 5:13-16 which states this:
“You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men. (14) “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; (15) nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. (16) Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven” (NASB).
We live in a world that is dependent on salt and light. New Testament scholar and pastor G. Campbell Morgan states why he believes Jesus immediately following The Beatitudes jumps to talking about light and salt:
“Jesus, looking out over the multitudes of His day, saw the corruption, the disintegration of life at every point, its breakup, its spoliation; and, because of His love of the multitudes, He knew the thing that they needed most was salt in order that the corruption should be arrested. He saw them also wrapped in gloom, sitting in darkness, groping amid mists and fogs. He knew that they needed, above everything else,... light” (Souce: G. Campbell Morgan, The Gospel According to Matthew, p. 46).
According to the Bible, our world is depraved, fallen, sinful, evil and corrupted. You don’t have to look far to see it and experience it. With the push to kill innocent babies through abortion, gay marriages, transgenderism, Anti-Semitism, Hamas and terrorism, school shootings, bribed and owned politicians, corrupted government agencies, preachers who fear preaching the truth in our culture and kids and teens and who no longer know which gender they are or if they have gender. For those who believe in evolution, that something simple mutates and evolves into something more complex, just look around will you? We are not evolving. We are de-evolving as people.
This is the Apostle Paul’s point in 2 Timothy 3:13, “But evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived” (NASB). This means our world can do nothing but get worse, more sinful and more evil, if you can even imagine that, because there is no innate goodness in it.
I read about what a college professor said to his class one day. This professor told the class that “marriage was on the decline because man was evolving to a higher level. Marriage was something that man needed only at the lower stages of his evolutionary development. Now that man had ascended farther up the evolutionary scale, marriage was falling off just as his prehensile tail had done millions of years ago” (Source: John MacArthur, The MacArthur New Testament Commentary, “Matthew,” p. 237).
Yes, humanity has made great and huge strides in science, medicine, education, and technology, but at the same time we have made great strides in de-evolving. You don’t need me to tell you that. You can see it for yourself. We are sick with a virus called sin. There is no cure for this virus apart from Jesus Christ. Instead of wanting to be healed, humanity prefers its sickness and decadence. This was Jesus’ point in John 3:19-21:
“This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. (20) For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. (21) But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God” (NASB).
As our knowledge increases in so many areas, we are ignorant, in the dark about real truth. The Apostle Paul wrote these words to young Timothy in 1 Timothy 3:7, “. . . always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (NASB). We live in a world where sin no longer exists according to the pagan specialists. We now call bad characteristics addictions, bad impulses, and a bad childhood. These same specialists argue that with a little behavior modification or electrical impulses to the brain, or genetic alteration we can create a crime-free world. What they in their brilliance and wisdom fail to take into account that every human is rotten to the core.
Our total nature is depraved from birth. This is what King David affirmed in Psalm 51:5, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, And in sin my mother conceived me” (NASB). What these specialists fail to consider is there is nothing good at any level to use to build a better life. Each previous war is supposed to be the war that ends all wars, until . . .the next war comes.
With all the education and money we have been taxed and paid, people have not stopped committing crimes. Immorality has increased and perversion has gone to worse perversion. Hello, the spiral is not up, but down. Look at the surveys. People are more pessimistic, despaired, and depressed today than ever before. It is for this reason, Jesus has called us His disciples to be salt and light in this decadent world. We will look at this more tomorrow.
Questions To Consider
- When it comes to this issue of sin, how conscious are you of your own sin? As in The Beatitudes, Matthew 5:4, are you heart-broken over your sin so that you mourn for what it does to you and others? Why or why not?
- Humanity has made some wonderful accomplishments in the last few years, but all it has done is make life easier. It has not made our souls godly and holy. Why do you think so many people turn to the idols of science, education, medicine and technology to improve their lives rather than Jesus Christ?
- Many parents, even Christian parents, are more concerned that their children get a great education more than they get equipped biblically to live in this world. All this learning ever does is never brings them “to the knowledge of the truth.” If you are a Christian parent, which do you stress and why? If you were not raised by Christian parents, which do you emphasize more today and why?
- If you could change or improve anything about your discipleship, your walk with Christ today, what would it be and why?
Scripture To Meditate On: Romans 12:2, “Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you” (MSG).
Prayer To Pray: “Dear Jesus, please help me to shine Your light in this sinful and dark world. I do not want to be dragged down to the level of this world; instead, I want You to use me to help pull people up to You. I love You Jesus. In Jesus’ name, Amen!”
I love you Southside!--Pastor Kelly