“Do not participate in the worthless and unproductive deeds of darkness, but instead expose them [by exemplifying personal integrity, moral courage, and godly character]; for it is disgraceful even to mention the things that such people practice in secret. But all things become visible when they are exposed by the light [of God’s precepts], for it is light that makes everything visible.” (Ephesians 5:11-13 AMP)
We are living in a dark age. As this age draws to a close, it is dominated by the prince and powers of darkness. Men today love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. Sinners wait in anticipation each day for the night to come so they can go out and partake of evil. They live for the darkness both naturally and spiritually.
The depths of our present-day state of human depravity are too vile for any one word to describe. We are seeing unusual manifestations of evil right before our very eyes. More and more weird, demonic combinations of iniquity are showing themselves every day. The demonic forces of hell have been unleashed in full force, and satan laughs as he watches them do their destruction.
The sad thing about all of this is that the world is almost begging for it to happen. We not only live in the dark, but we're also getting used to it. There is a slow, sinister brainwashing process going on that is telling man sin is good, sin is good. Even churches today are telling their people that it's okay to sin a little each day. Why? Because they say we're not perfect and God surely can’t expect us not to sin ever. God does expect you not to sin! He wants you to cast off the works of darkness and come out from it and be a separate and a holy people. The more you stay in darkness, the more sin will be made to appear less sinful, until the light within us becomes darkness. Why do you think that the Bible tells us to “abstain from the very appearance of evil”?
Lot was a righteous man, but he moved into Sodom and lived in that den of iniquity. His soul was vexed with the sodomite’s evil deeds. He lost his influence with his family and had to flee for his life. Modern lots tell us that we should hobnob with Sodom and get chummy with Gomorrah in order to convert them. But the end does not justify the means. Such people do not turn the light on in Sodom–they merely get used to the dark. The worst thing in all of this is that such people get so used to the dark that they actually think it is growing brighter. Sit long enough in a dark room and you will imagine that more light is coming in. Men who dwell too long in darkness are really establishing a peaceful coexistence with evil. They are trying to have communion between light and darkness, a concord between Christ and satan.
One of the signs of getting used to the dark is the way we excuse sin. There was a time when sin shocked us. But, as the brainwashing process of the devil goes on, what once amazed us now only amuses us. We laugh at the shady jokes. We give sin new names. Adultery is now free love. The drunkard is now just a sick alcoholic. Homosexuals are now just born that way, after all they can't help it. Murderers are temporarily insane. What's going on Church? The world lives in the dark because it rejects Jesus Christ, the light of the world. John 3:19 says, “and this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” Jesus said of Himself, “I am the light of the world.” Jesus said of the saints, “you are the light of the world.”
Christian warriors, our business is to let our light shine. Sad to say though, we are so afraid of being offensive that we are not being effective. Jesus said that two things would smother the light of our testimony, a bushel and a bed. Today we dim our light in a third way. We turn it low for fear of creating a disturbance. We shade it to match the dimness of this present age. We would rather grieve the Holy Spirit than offend the wicked. The early Christians did not dim their lights to match the times. Paul constantly troubled the places he went, and even in prison he turned the night into day. The saints in Rome even lit the world in their death with their burning bodies. May God help us to have that same kind of warrior faith.
We are a city set on a hill, not hidden in a dungeon. We are to shine as lights in the world. This is no time to get used to the dark. It is time to turn on the light. Too long have the caverns of this world been undisturbed. When you overturn a stone in the field and the sunlight strikes beneath it, all the hidden, creeping and crawling things run for cover. So do our sinful hearts grow restless under the light of God's truth. Light has no communion with darkness. We are not here to commune with it, but to conquer it! And “this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.”
Early Christianity set the world aglow because absolute light was pitched against absolute darkness. The early Christians believe that the Gospel was the only hope of the world. The day has come, though, that many Christians think there is some darkness in our light and some light in the world's darkness. We half doubt our own gospel and half believe the religion of this age. We're creeping around in the dark when we should be flooding the world with light. We need to get our candles out from under bushels and take off the shades of compromise and win a lost and dying world for Jesus.