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September 27, 2022 · 25 min · Pray Radio
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Dr. Tony Evans is the founder and senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, founder and president of The Urban Alternative and author of over 100 books, booklets and Bible studies.
665K followers
0:00 God offers nations freedom, but only by his rules and regulations. You skip that and you live in slavery.0:07 Doctor. Tony Evans says the true message of God's freedom hasn't yet reached everybody.0:12 It's time for a spiritual Juneteenth to celebrate freedom and to bring it to the politicians, the pundits, the political party, and to the media.0:21 This is The Alternative with Doctor. Tony Evans, author, speaker, senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, Texas, and president of The Urban Alternative.0:33 We celebrate independence in this country, but Doctor. Evans says the kind of independence people tend to declare these days can destroy us. Let's join him as he takes a sobering look at God's0:45 message to America.0:46 The biblical definition for civil government is to maintain a safe, just, righteous, and compassionately0:58 responsible environment for freedom to flourish. That's the 1 thing you vote for. When God created the first man who would be the preamble for the1:10 human race. He brought in the issue of freedom. God says, From every tree of the garden you may freely eat. That's why God gives you a1:22 choice, but He gives you the choice from the good things He has provided. I want you to notice something else about freedom. Freedom involved responsibility.1:34 It says, God put him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. I'm going to give you freedom, but you have to be responsible to manage1:46 it, to maintain it, and to expand its productivity. Yes. Freedom involves the responsibility to maximize1:58 the opportunity that God has provided you. But please notice something. The restriction. Did you know freedom has restrictions? Without2:10 restrictions, the word freedom loses its meaning. From every tree of the garden, maximum freedom, you may freely eat. But of the tree in the midst of2:22 the garden, you are not to eat it or it will kill you. He creates a restriction in the midst of the opportunity for freedom.2:34 He says, Even though I'm a give you freedom, I'm a give you a boundary. Pay attention here. Maximizing your freedom demands2:45 legitimate boundaries. The boundaries are not designed to restrict freedom. It is designed to enhance freedom if it's2:57 a legitimate boundary. Now, when you have time, I want you to read First Samuel chapter 8, and I want you to read verses 103:09 through 19. He says, If you exclude me from your government, if you exclude me from your rulers, yeah, you can say, In God we trust all you3:20 want. You can put the 10 Commandments on the, you know, in the courthouse all you want. But if you depart from my definition of civil government to maintain a safe, just, righteous, and compassionately3:32 responsible environment so that freedom can flourish, and you decide to come up with your own rules to run your nation, the government will take your family, he says. The government will put you in wars3:44 that you shouldn't go in. The government will require taxes that you shouldn't be obligated to pay. He says the government will control your children. And he says, and then you will be3:56 in a hot mess. And then he explains why. Because you've turned your government into God. Okay. I said it because God said it. He says, once you4:08 turn your government into God and stop looking to God and start looking to government, the government will take things I never meant for the government to have because when I govern, it's4:20 limited regulations, it's maximum freedom. And he says, Then you will let government take care of you. This is where whether you're Democrat or Republican, whether you're right or4:32 left, you can either have too many rules or you can have the wrong rules. Because if you have the wrong rules, it doesn't matter that you have a few rules because they're not the rules you ought to have. God says that I4:43 want to set the boundary, and if you don't let me set the boundary, you will replace me with another god, and you will make government that god because it will4:55 infringe on my other governments. Remember, in God's kingdom, civil government is not the only government. There's self government. There is family government. There is5:06 ecclesiastical government, and then there is civil government. And the 1 is not to illegitimately impose itself on the other. And it is an understanding the5:18 kingdom. Because remember, you're supposed to be a kingdom independent. Right? It is in understanding the kingdom that civil government gets to be what it's designed to be. Now I know that we live in5:30 a secular world with secular thinking. That's why you need the right kind of leaders, both in character and both in competence, that5:41 are biblically oriented so that they can seek to influence the biblical definition of government so that God can be involved in government and not excluded5:53 from government because God says in First Samuel, If you exclude me from government, I will stay excluded, and I will leave you alone and let you handle this hot mess you've created without me.6:05 And it doesn't take a genius to see what has happened in our world. So God created boundaries in order to maximize freedom.6:17 He told Adam, The tree in the midst of the garden is an information tree. It's got good information and bad information. Tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It's an information tree.6:30 I do not want you discovering truth apart from me. So I need to say a word about this. Truth. Truth goes beyond probabilities and possibilities and potentialities. Truth6:42 is an absolute standard by which reality is measured. Let me dumb it down for us all. Truth is God's perspective on every subject. Truth is not what you believe to be true.6:53 Truth is not what you feel is true. Truth is not what you want to be true. Truth is what God says is true, which means you adjust your thinking, your feeling, your education, your knowledge, your7:05 votes, all of that. You adjust all that to what God says. And the reason why we don't have kingdom impact is we don't have kingdom thinkers7:17 and thus not kingdom independence. They're more aligned to a political ideology than through the kingdom of God, leading to a division in the church and a lack of7:29 impact in the culture. No. God gave them 10 rules, and the rules are negative. Thou shalt not, thou shalt not, thou shalt not. But the only reason He gives them7:40 10 negative rules is so we can keep them in maximum freedom. Isn't that what laws do? Laws are to restrict bad in order so that good can flourish, if it's a righteous law. He says,7:53 Don't do these 10 things so that you can stay free because I set you free. If you want to experience the freedom in your life and in our nation, then we need a government that gives maximum8:05 freedom limited but safe, just and righteous regulations. Look, when you draw a line, you usually use a ruler. Right? If you want the line to be perfectly straight because if you just8:17 use your hand, it's gonna wiggle. See, what we have today are Christians who lean to their own understanding, and we wonder why the culture is wiggling because we don't have a ruler, a8:28 standard separate from ourselves, outside of ourselves, to which we must look that is perfect to guide our decision making. And, yes, who8:40 we elect, what policies we support or reject, because we belong to another kingdom, and our ultimate allegiance is to another king.8:53 What would you think about a pilot who said, I think this is the button I ought to push? Or a doctor who said, I think this is the place I ought to cut? Or a pharmacist who says, Well, I think this is9:05 the medication that you ought to take. Your confidence would fall flat, wouldn't it? Because in that position, you don't want somebody guessing when your life is on the line.9:18 But what do you do when the life of your nation is on the line? Do you go back to guessing? Do you go back to people who think, who don't agree? Or do you go to the Creator of government, which9:29 we saw in Romans 13, the 1 who created government and who says, You don't even know how to run a government without me. And you won't run it right without me.9:42 And as a result, you have all kind of evil that proliferates. That's why people skip passages to keep their evil. 1 of the passages that addresses9:54 slavery, for example, 1 of the great sins of our history is Exodus twenty-one 16. It says, If you can kidnap somebody and then if you sell them,10:07 then you have committed a capital crime worthy of death. That would have shut down slavery right there. But people skipped it in order to not follow through on freedom,10:19 in order to maintain an economic system that was wrong. But then the Bible talks about protest. It says there's a righteous way to protest. There's a righteous10:31 way. It encourages protest as long as it's just and it's righteous. And so we get all this mixed up because people want to lean to their own10:42 understanding. And the problem is Christians are doing it, too, across racial, cultural, class, political lines. But God has established government. And when people turn10:54 from His standard of government, consequences are great. Because look at what He said to Adam. The day you eat of it, you shall surely die. Okay, now11:06 you got it. Civil government is to give maximum freedom of the good things God has provided for people to exercise responsibility. It gives limited regulations,11:20 and it gives dire consequences. You shall surely die. In other words, as Romans 13 says, the government does not bear the sword in vain, an instrument of intimidation11:33 and an instrument of judgment and death. In other words, you are to live under the threat. Why? Because men are sinful. And 1 of the things that holds in their sin are the11:45 consequences. That's what laws are designed to do that are righteous and just and safe to maximize our ability to enjoy freedom, which means those laws must be11:57 righteous, but they must be quick in their just execution. And so when Adam and Eve decided they would choose wrongly,12:09 guess what they lost? They lost the freedom of a happy home. They were now in conflict with 1 another. They lost the freedom of enjoying their work because it says now in chapter 3,12:21 they would toil in their work. They lost the freedom of enjoying a healthy environment because thorns and thistles would now grow, chapter 3 says. And why did all of12:33 that happen? Because they settled for the okey doke. They settled for the okey doke. They got tricked by the devil who said, You don't need God. You12:45 can govern yourself. And when they decided, I don't need God, I'm my own government, set my own rules, they lost their freedom.12:55 Doctor. Evans will tell us what we need to do once we grasp freedom as God defines it when he continues our message in just a moment. First, though, I wanna let you know about a very special offer that'll only be around13:07 for a limited time. As we've been learning, it gets harder and harder to sift out deception from the truth and stay focused on what's really important as the midterm elections draw closer. So13:18 we'd like you to have a copy of doctor Evans' new book, Kingdom Politics. It challenges us to look beyond what may seem best for ourselves and focus on the people, principles, platforms,13:30 party that best represent the values of God's kingdom. Tony also looks at the qualities that make a good candidate and talks about whether certain issues are nonnegotiable. With the election just a13:42 short time away, we'd like you to have a copy of kingdom politics as our thank you gift when you help support Tony's ministry with a donation. As a bonus, it'll come to you along with the full length versions of13:54 all 10 messages in his current 2 volume series, Returning God to Government. Get the details and make your request online at tony evans dot org before time runs out. You can14:06 also call our resource center at 1 8 0 0 8 0 0 3 2 2 2, operated around the clock for your convenience. I'll repeat that information after part 2 of today's lesson and this.14:17 Well, the good news for you and I today is king Jesus knows where we are. Are14:23 you ready to discover why God has called you? On October fourth through the seventh, join the kingdom agenda pastor summit. Create community impact from the comfort of your own home or join us in person.14:33 I'm not gonna let you make me what I cannot be, which is a man who doesn't struggle against sin and a man who doesn't need community and prayer.14:41 Choose from over 40 compelling breakout sessions, including sessions for pastor's wives.14:46 I don't care what you're going through. I don't care what the situation is. All that's real but not relevant because this applies to everybody.14:56 Work smarter, not harder. Sign up for the kingdom leaders summit at cap 20 22 dot com and get empowered today. That's k a p 20 22 dot com.15:07 He says, let me explain your life. Here it is. It's a work of God, and it's just the beginning.15:14 Sponsored by The Urban Alternative.15:17 If you now understand freedom as God defines it, maximum freedom, limited regulations, dire consequences, and so you're going to exercise15:28 responsibility to maximize your created potential, then what is 1 of the main things you should be doing?15:40 Here it is. Setting other folks free. Ah, that's why I love Galatians chapter 5. It was for freedom you have been made free.15:53 Every free person should be invested in freeing somebody else. You don't just get to be free in order for you only to be free.16:05 You get to be free to become a freedom fighter, to become a spiritual abolitionist because you're involved in setting other folk who are being illegitimately held hostage, whether by class,16:17 whether by race. You've gotten your dignity back. You're transferring that and giving other folks their dignity back. God has raised you up out of the ashes. You're reaching down and raising other16:29 folks out of the ashes. 1 of the tragedy of the civil rights movement that set the laws right is that not enough of us have reached back down for those still trapped.16:41 We've not reached down and brought them back up to the dignity we ourselves have achieved. If you name the name of Jesus Christ, you should be a freedom fighter. The tragedy of the16:53 American experiment is that folks who were fighting for freedom were still willing to hold other people hostage. They weren't setting other people free, whether it's slavery or17:05 the antebellum days or whether it's criminal leasing or whether it's Jim Crow or however it's manifested. No matter how it shows up, if you are a Christian and17:17 you understand God's definition of government, you're a freedom fighter, and you're setting other people free. I love the way Nelson Mandela put it, When I went to South Africa and I saw in the17:29 museum there of apartheid the statement that he made. He said, To be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in such a way that respects and17:40 enhances the freedom of others. Are you a freedom fighter? Are you setting other folk free who are willing to be responsible? The Emancipation17:51 Proclamation was a glorious document in January of 18 63. It set the slaves free. When18:03 the slaves were set free, many of the slaves went north because they were no longer held hostage to southern plantations. Now, going north was risky18:15 business because there were still folks out there who didn't believe in freedom. There were still folks out there who didn't accept the concept of freedom.18:28 And so they were willing to take the risk to be free because they didn't want their families and their legacy to operate in slavery any longer.18:40 But did you know there were many people in the South who didn't make the trek north? They wouldn't go north. 1 of the reasons why is because they had been a slave too long.18:53 They got used to slavery. The plantation had become comfortable. They at least knew the plantation. They understood the plantation. They knew how to work the plantation. But freedom19:04 was risky business. They had to go through these areas where there were enemies. And so they locked themselves in slavery19:16 because to be free was taking too big a risk. Unfortunately, we've got too many Christians who don't want to go north. They don't want to fight for biblical19:28 freedom, and so they dumb down to the cultures and the parties of the day. And they operate with a spiritual plantation mentality. Not understanding19:40 God's biblical authority, God's biblical guidelines, it's time for another kind of Juneteenth. You know Juneteenth. That's when in June 1819:52 65, the word came to the slaves in Texas and then beyond, you've been set free. That's a year and a half from the proclamation.20:05 Folk have been partying ever since. Texas, surrounding states. It's called Juneteenth. It's a party because it's remembering when we got the good news of20:17 freedom. Now, for a year and a half it had been hidden, and so folks were functioning in slavery when they had been set free. Jesus Christ20:29 offers you and me freedom. He even offers governments freedom that will operate by His definition of freedom under His definition of civil government.20:41 But a lot of folks are so used to being slaves or illegitimately depending upon government to be God or illegitimately20:52 applying government in the wrong way, and they get used to the plantation mentality. It's time for some freedom fighters. It's time for a spiritual Juneteenth21:05 to celebrate freedom and to bring it to the politicians, the pundits, the political party and to the media that God offers nations freedom, but only by His21:17 rules and regulations. You skip that, and you live in slavery even though you still may talk about being free.21:31 Doctor Evans will come back to wrap up today's teaching with an important invitation for us in just a moment. First, a quick reminder that today's message is part of a new 10 lesson series from doctor Evans titled21:42 Returning God to Government. As I mentioned earlier, when you make a donation to support the ministry of the alternative, we'll send you this entire 2 volume collection as our gift along with Tony's brand new21:54 book, Kingdom Politics. This special double offer will only be available for a limited time, so don't put it off. Visit Tony Evans dot org today to get the details and make the22:05 arrangements. While you're there, check out our huge collection of audio, video, and print resources designed to strengthen your faith. Again, that's Tony Evans dot org Or give us22:17 a call day or night at 1 808 hundred 32 22. That's 1 808 hundred 3 2 2 2. Some of the decisions we make at the polls seem22:29 like a question of left versus right, red versus blue, this party or that party. But Doctor. Evans says the real choices on our ballot can literally be matters of life and death. Be sure to22:41 join him tomorrow as he takes a bold biblical stand on 1 of the most controversial moral issues of our time. Right now, though, he's back with this important invitation.22:51 Now the worst kind of freedom of all is recorded by Jesus in John chapter 8 when He says, If you've been controlled23:03 by sin, then you're in personal bondage. And what good is setting a nation free if you will even let God set you free from whatever is holding you hostage? That's why I want to invite you,23:15 if you are under the sound of my voice and you've never received spiritual freedom, you've never accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, you've never invited Him into23:27 your life to forgive your sins and give you eternal life. Then I want to invite you to come to Christ right now for salvation. How do you do that? You simply go to Him and23:39 say, I'm a sinner and I need a Savior. I need to be forgiven of my sins. I agree that I cannot save myself, and I trust you alone for my eternal23:50 destiny. And if you place faith alone and Christ alone, He will forgive your sins and give you the gift of eternal life and will do it right now. If you go by faith in Him,24:03 trusting Him as your only sin bearer, He will give you eternal life. And so, Father, thank you for freedom, the freedom you offer us and the freedom you even offer a nation,24:15 if it will operate by your standard and your definition. Help us to play our part as kingdom independence, to take our stand with You so that if Christ be not come,24:27 we save a nation from slavery. In Jesus' name, amen.24:34 The Alternative with Doctor. Tony Evans is brought to you by The Urban Alternative and is made possible by the generous contributions of listeners like you.
