Skip to content Poison in the Pot Jun 25 · 38 min ...more
Support this leader Liking this video? Support this ministry.
Support this leader
Liking this video? Support this ministry.
Give
Support this leader Liking this video? Support this ministry.
665K followers
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 A pastor went to visit 1 of his parishioners, a very elderly lady, and he just wanted to minister to her in this0:13 final season of life. And so he went to her home and was welcomed in by this elderly church member. She welcomed0:24 him in and had him sit in the living room, and they began to chat. Situated before him on a little table was a bowl of0:36 peanuts. He asked his host, these peanuts sure look good. Would you mind if I I had some? Oh, she said, absolutely not. Feel free.0:49 And so as they talked, he would pick up a peanut or 2 here or peanut or 2 there. And after he'd been there for 30 or 40 minutes, he noted that he had eaten1:00 virtually all the peanuts. And so he said to his elderly host, I am so sorry. I've been talking and enjoying our conversation1:12 so much. I I've almost eaten up all of your peanuts. Oh, she said, well, that's really okay. I1:24 haven't been able to eat peanuts since I lost my teeth, so now I just suck the chocolate off of them and leave them in the bowl.1:44 Sometimes you don't know what you're eating. Such is the case in our passage today. We're told in verse1:56 38 that Elisha returns to Gilgal to be with the sons of the prophets.2:08 Gilgal was where the seminary was, if you will, for training the prophets. It was there where the school of the prophets was2:20 located. It was there where they would be prepared for the prophetic ministry that they were being called to, and Elisha is like the president or the chancellor of the2:32 school, you would say today. His job would be to equip the sons of the prophets in order to fulfill their responsibilities prophetically.2:44 It was very important for him to be there because we're told in verse 38 that there was a famine in the land. That means there wasn't2:56 food. A famine meant that the agricultural industry, since it was an agrarian people, they lived off of the land, was not producing many3:08 vegetables and fruits for the people to be sustained and survived. Well, that was only because there wasn't enough rain to saturate the earth for the seeds to3:20 grow to produce the food that the people needed to be satisfied and sustained with. So there was a famine in the land. Now why does the author3:31 of the book of Kings wanna tell you that there was a famine in the land? The reason he wants to tell you that is because of why there was a famine in the land. You3:43 see, God told his people, if you depart from me and go after other gods, I will close-up the3:54 heavens, and there will be no rain. He told them in Deuteronomy chapter 28 verse 24, if you4:06 leave and walk away from me and my word and chase other gods, your ground will become like iron, and things will not be able to grow.4:19 To put it another way, when you walk away from me, you will be famished. There will be a famine in the land when you leave me, my word, and chase after other4:31 gods. So the reason that there was an agricultural famine is because it had been preceded by a spiritual departure.4:43 Because the spiritual was not being handled correctly, the agricultural was in trouble. The reason why Elisha goes to the school of the4:55 prophets is that it was the job of the prophets to explain to the people the spiritual reasons for their social dilemma,5:07 their agricultural dilemma, their economic dilemma. Because the people would not automatically make the connection5:19 between no food and their relationship with God. They are just seeing it's not raining. They're just seeing stuff is not growing. They're just seeing we are hungry,5:31 and they're seeing their socioeconomic agrarian agricultural reality, but not the spiritual cause of it. You find them in5:43 verse 38. It says, sitting before Elisha. They're in school. He's the professor. They are the students. They're in the classroom, seated before him5:55 because his job was to equip them to deliver to the people the spiritual cause for their social chaos.6:07 And their chaos was a famine in the land. There is a famine in the land. What you are seeing on CNN6:20 and MSNBC and Fox News and Dallas Morning News and all of this chaos you are seeing has to do with a6:31 famine in the land. Now how do you know when you're in a famine? You are hungry and nothing you do satisfies. So you know you're you're6:43 in a famine when you are hungry, and you can't get what you need to fix the hunger you possess. You look at all the time and the money and the meetings and the6:55 efforts and the gatherings and the complaints and the fights and the marches and the reactions and the reactions, and nothing seems to satisfy. Nothing7:07 seems to work. Nothing seems to fit or to fix the dilemma because there has not yet been made the correlation between our7:19 social, economic, familial, personal starvation and the spiritual departure from God that has affected and infected our7:30 lives and our culture. And until that connection is made, you stay hungry. Hungry for peace, hungry for productivity,7:42 hungry for harmony, hungry for unity, hungry for oneness, hungry for order, hungry for a society that is not in decline. You wind7:54 up socially starving to death. And the thing about it is if the connection is not made,8:08 There is nothing that will satisfy. Oh, you can come up with something in the meantime that gives you a temporary8:18 fix only to discover it doesn't last very long. Now it's been a while. It's been a minute since8:30 I've been engaging myself in the local donut shop. It's been a minute. So I figured I deserve me.8:42 I deserve after all this time, not bypassing the donut shop, I deserve me some glazed doughnuts. So8:54 I went by the other day, the local doughnut shop, and I asked her for a doughnut or 29:07 or 3. I asked her to give me a twister and a glaze and 1 of them9:18 round things that cinnamon roll. Because I I thought I was do that after all this time that I I've been staying away from them. And and since I was there, I told her to9:30 warm them up. Because that's a different kind of doughnut when you warm it up. So she put it in the microwave for9:42 30 seconds or so. I mean, it it just melted in my mouth. But I noticed something, and that is as9:53 wonderful as it tasted. It wasn't long before I was hungry again. Because while it tasted good, it did not satisfy my10:05 nutritional need. And what's happening today is people are looking for some sugar to taste10:17 some answers, but it's not satisfying what's really wrong in our lives, in our world, and in our culture because there's a famine in the10:28 land. And until the cause is addressed, the cure cannot be experienced. And it's because of this10:40 famine that the prophets were being prepared to take the spiritual and the supernatural into the natural because10:52 that would be the only way people would ever eat. People would ever see heaven open, rain fall, the earth flourish, so there would no11:03 longer be a famine. And so in order to prepare the sons of the prophets whose job it would be to give God's prophetic11:15 word to the people to bring them back spiritually so that the famine could end, he had to make sure they were fed. Because if you're11:27 not fed, you can't do much feeding. Since their job was to feed the people, Elisha had to make sure they were fed. The problem had occurred in11:39 the culture of idolatry, the departure from the true God to false gods. Remember, an idol is any noun, person, place, thing, or11:51 thought that becomes your source. Whatever that is is your source is your god. We have designer gods in America. We12:03 have people who've made their race their god, their money their god, their politic their god because it is their source. Whatever your source is, is your god. And12:15 they had traded it in for an idol that could not see, when they looked at idols, they looked at idols to meet needs, to make it rain, to bring fertility to the12:26 earth. They were looking for idols to do something. An idol is like dating an image. It's like going on a date with a picture of your boyfriend rather than your boyfriend12:39 or girlfriend. It's it's dating an image. So they had turned from the true and living God to illegitimate sources to get their needs12:50 met. Whenever you do that, with whom you do that, you have now developed an idol, which means the true God steps away,13:02 and you wind up starving to death. 1 of the biggest idols of our day is religion. We've got more13:14 churches than ever, more books than ever, more programs than ever, more more activities than ever, and more starving people than ever. Because even religion13:26 void of God will leave you as a hungry saint. So even the sons of the prophets are13:38 hungry. So Elijah just says, we've gotta feed these guys. He tells his servant to make a stew to make a stew so13:50 that the sons of the prophets could eat. But in verse 39, 1 of the guys gets a bright idea. It14:01 says, he went out into the field and gathered herbs, found a wild vine, gathered them in his lap, the wild gourd, sliced them, put it in14:13 the stew for they did not know what they were. So Elisha said, make a stew. He says, I wanna sweeten14:25 the pot. I wanna put some stuff in the stew to juice it up. I wanna put something in the stew to add a little more flavor. So he goes out14:37 into the field, and he finds a wild vine. And he picks from the wild vine wild gourds. Now a gourd is14:49 basically a cucumber, but a wild gourd is a cucumber with poisonous pulp. So the poison is inside15:01 the gourd that looks like a cucumber. So you think it's a cucumber when it's actually poison, but it doesn't look like15:12 poison. It doesn't sound like poison. It's growing like it's not poison because he couldn't see what was inside of it. He could only15:24 see the outside look, and it looked like it would make the stew better. So he comes, and according to the scripture, he chops it up, and he puts it in the stew. When15:36 he puts it in the stew, verse 40, they poured it out for the men to eat. And as they were eating the stew, they cried out and said, oh, man of God, there is death in the15:48 pot. And they were unable to eat. In other words, food poisoning set in, and they got sick as a dog.16:00 There is death in the pot. Now wait a minute. The purpose of the stool was to feed the prophets so they could be healthy to get the16:12 work done in a time of famine. But because somebody had a bright idea to go out and find something that looked good16:24 in the broader field, bring it, chop it up, and mix it with the stew that what they put in it contaminated it. Now watch16:36 this. The poison pulp from the wild cucumber, it overrode the stew. The stew didn't override it. In other16:47 words, the whole stew got contaminated, and everybody who ate from it got contaminated. So the men said there's death in the pot. Where am I going with this?16:59 Whenever you go out to the world to get poisonous ideas, poisonous17:11 worldviews through poisonous people who look good. It looks like it ought to work. It looks like it ought to17:23 fit. It looks like it'll make my life better. It looks like it'll heal my my depression, my struggles. It looks like it's gonna strengthen me, and we chop it17:34 up, and we mix it with the truth of God's word. We bring the ideas of the world into the church, the ideas of the world into17:46 our lives, and we mix it with the word of God. It's not that we deny the word. It's that we mix it with wild gourds. And when you mix God's truth17:58 with wild gourds, it contaminates the truth so that the truth that was supposed to set you free winds up killing you because18:09 it has been contaminated with something that it cannot accept. The Bible says that you do18:21 kill the word with your ideas. Whenever you bring thoughts, concepts, and ideas18:33 and mix them with God's truth when they are not consistent with God's truth, you are killing yourself. So what we are seeing in18:45 our culture and in our lives today is an illegitimate mixture. We go to our colleges and universities. We pick up18:57 poisonous ideas in the name of making money, stir it into a little church because we think somehow if we can mix it, even though it contradicts it, it'll make19:09 us better, more profitable, it'll make us more successful, and we wind up wanting to know even without degrees, why am I dying? Why can't I keep my life together?19:20 Why why is that with all these educated people out here, they ought to be able to figure a way for all of us to get along. How come all these smart people with all these19:32 brilliant ideas, with all this money, and all this edumacation can't heal this land that's falling apart because they got poison in the stew. And19:47 when you have an illegitimate mixture of God's way and the world's way of human wisdom with divine wisdom, whenever you bring those 2 together, you19:59 cancel out God. God can be canceled by the wrong combination. So they bring in this pulp, and he20:11 says, this wild gourd, it's adding something to God which he has not approved or prescribed because it looks good.20:23 That's false religion. It looks good. It sounds good. It says they ate it,20:35 and they said we cannot we're gagging here on this mixture. You can't mix. If you if you mix diesel and unleaded, you ain't going nowhere.20:48 Oil and water are not designed to mix. They're 2 different worlds, and that's what the bible calls double mindedness. You're going you're going both ways, and you're21:00 trying to mix the 2 together. When something contradicts God that's why the bible says you can neither take away from my word nor can you add to my word. And then the bible says, if you take away from it or if21:12 you illegitimately add to it, you add a curse to yourself. Because God is smart enough not to need your help. And21:27 so they said, we can't eat this. Well, now we got a problem. Because if the preachers can't even eat it, how they gonna help the folks to know how to eat?21:38 If the folks who are supposed to be giving you the word of God are mixing it. If they are taking from the world21:51 and trying to give you hell's answer to help heaven out, Then how can the son of the prophets be of any benefit to the people who are22:02 gagging because of the absence of truth? False religion is turning to illegitimate outside sources that contradict God's truth, and you stay22:14 in a famine. There is no solution to what you're seeing happening in our cities, in our culture, in our country, in our lives as long as the spiritual is22:26 either marginalized or illegitimately mixed. And if you ever have folk who walk across your lawn, you're a green22:38 granny, just walk across your lawn regularly. Just kids like to do that. They go in the name of a shortcut. They're walking across your lawn in the name of a shortcut. So what they're doing is they're killing a22:50 path of grass. They're killing a path of grass. What they're doing is they're creating an illegitimate path to a destination. People are regularly23:02 cutting across God's truth with illegitimate additions trying to get to a destination. And they wonder why they're hungry, why they23:14 can't be satisfied, satisfied with peace and order and productivity and meaning because there has been an illegitimate addition. So23:26 Elijah's gotta resolve this problem with the sons of the prophet whose job it is to bring the nation back to God. So in verse 41, Elijah says,23:38 bring me meal. Bring me meal. Meal is flour. Flour. Bring me meal. They bring the flour to him. He throws it into the pot23:50 and says, pour it out for the people that they may eat. Then there was no harm in the pot. Interesting. Here's the problem. The problem is that the24:01 mixture has now already occurred. The poison pulp is already in the stew, and there is no way to get the poison out of the stool because it's24:13 it's already been mixed up. You got anything going on in your life that you you can't fix it because this is you too messed up. It's just it's just all up in your stuff. It's just all up in this24:25 it's integrated itself into the fibers of your life, and you don't know how to separate it. And you can't separate it because it's it's already in the stew of your existence. How24:37 do I unwrap myself out of this situation by either me putting the poison pump in or allowing somebody else to put the poison pump in, and now it's been situated itself in the stew of my24:49 life, and I and I can't live, I can't eat, I can't function like I'm supposed to function because I got I got death in the pot, and the pot is my life. On my family, on my culture,25:01 it's already stirred up in there. It's been in there for a long time, and the racial problem has been going on for 240 years and the class problems and the cultural problems, and it's just all mixed25:13 up. And you got philosophies and theologies and theories, and you got personalities and histories and backgrounds, and you got all this stuff going on. And it's all just all mixed up in there, and you don't know what25:24 people's motives are. You don't even know what your own motives are. You're trying to figure out who to vote for because you don't like nobody, and you're just trying to work through all that. It's just all it's all25:33 mixed up. It's all in the stew. Elijah said, bring me flour.25:45 Now flour was used for making bread. The primary use of flour was for bread. Jesus said, man shall not live by25:57 bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. In fact, Jesus said, I am the bread of life. That's why bread shows up in the next verse. How26:10 was the problem resolved when the poison was already in it? Here's how it was resolved. It had to be overwhelmed26:22 by something stronger and thicker and more powerful. So Elijah knew, if I get the flour in there, it'll overwhelm the poison.26:34 It'll eat it up so that now the stew that was made bad can be transformed. I don't know how much26:46 poison you have in your personal life, in your world, and we see there's poison everywhere in the culture. But I do know this. This is not a26:57 time for this is not a time for Christian light. This is not a time for for now I lay me down to27:09 sleep. Pray the Lord my soul will keep. And if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul will take. No. We need some flour. That is we need the word of God so strong,27:21 so powerfully, so purely, so uncompromisingly that it overwhelms the poison that has27:32 penetrated the life. You need more of his word to overwhelm the poison that has been in your life for days, weeks, months, and years. You say, I've been dealing with this for years.27:44 You don't have enough flour. The flour has to overwhelm the poison. We need a generation of Christians now who take the word of God27:55 seriously, who take the word of God for what it is, not words about God, but the voice of God in print, and who overwhelm our lives and our28:07 souls. There's some sitting here with poisoned souls. Your souls have been poisoned by the wrong people, the wrong circumstances, the wrong addictions, and so the poison28:19 is situated inside of you, and you live with poison. Well, then it must be overwhelmed with flour, with the bread of life.28:31 The worse the poison is, the more of the word you need. Not the less of it, but you need it uncompromised.28:43 You you need it you you'll need some more pulp. The more gourds, you need it uncompromised. It says, now feed them28:54 this. Overwhelm them with the flour. There was no harm in the pot. He says in verse29:06 42, give them to the people that they may eat. Verse 43, give them to the people that they may eat. For thus29:18 saith the lord, they shall eat, and they shall have some left over. Let's follow this.29:30 There's a famine. Folk are starving. But the only reason there's a famine is because a spiritual issue had gone unaddressed. The prophets were being prepared to29:41 declare the word of the Lord, but they had to understand how this thing works And that you cannot integrate competing ideas, poisonous ideas, well educated29:53 poisonous ideas, rich poisonous ideas, popular poisonous idea from from people. I mean, you look at all these reality shows and and then and all these counseling shows, you better30:05 check and see whether there's any poison in the pulp. Because just because they look good and stand good and talk good and and got all that going on, you better ask, is there poison in this pulp?30:16 So they they overwhelmed it with the word. He says, now now you eat it. It says, and then they30:28 ate. Okay. Wait a minute. It was not enough that the problem was fixed.30:40 They had to eat it. Okay. You go to the restaurant. They hand you a menu.30:52 The menu is a written record of what the restaurant has to offer. Sometimes you salivate just by reading the menu because it just31:04 looks so good. You go, this looks good. Sometimes you say, oh, that looks good. That looks good. That looks good. Think I wanna try that. Think I wanna try that. Not only do you have a31:16 menu, you get a waiter who comes over and does a menu exposition, an exegesis of the menu.31:28 They come over and they describe it and tell you what this is and tell you all about it. Then they have a q and a session. Any questions?31:39 So they make themselves available for q and a so that you have clarity on what has been written for you to eat. You do31:51 not then, after reading the menu, and then after having an explanation by the wait or waitress of the menu, get up and leave.32:04 That's not why you came. You didn't come to read about it, nor did you just come to hear somebody explain it. You came for the experience of it to be32:16 filled by it, which means you have to eat. You see, a lot of folk wanna come to church to read it or to hear32:28 some waiter called a preacher to explain it, but they still leave hungry because they haven't eaten it. The word of God and its32:39 transforming flower will never change your life, your home, your church, or your society unless the folk eat it.32:52 Jeremiah said, I ate your words, and they were like honey inside of me. They changed me. Until the word you hear33:04 is what you apply and act on, you leave the restaurant hungry and unaffected by even showing up there. And that's why you can go to church33:16 every single Sunday. You could go 52 weeks a year, 52 Wednesdays a year, and still be in a famine. Because you didn't need it.33:28 You observed it. You watched it. You read it. You heard it, but you never swallowed. And only by the application acting on it. If you33:40 are right now in a famine in your life, how do you know? You are eating it because you're gonna find out everything God has to say about your problem, everything in this book about your problem. I'm if I33:52 don't know it, I'm a call on somebody who can show me everything God says about what I'm going through even if I created my own poison. And then I'm a think about it,34:04 meditate on it, and do whatever it says about it because I believe that if I eat it, I'm gonna be satisfied.34:16 I'm going to be filled. I'm going to be changed. We're in a crisis on every level.34:30 And as Hebrews 12 says, God shakes things up to get our attention. He shakes things up until you get the point.34:42 Without him, it's unfixable. And what you are seeing now in our country, our culture, in our racial relationships, the brilliant minds can't fix.34:56 Because the scripture says in first Corinthians chapter 1 and first Corinthians chapter 2, God makes a fool of the wisdom of this world. God35:09 will downright embarrass you by thinking you can do this without him or have to add to him to get it done right. I35:23 don't know what's getting you hungry today, but I do know where there's some food. I don't know why your soul is starving today or our35:35 culture is starving today, but I do know where there's some flour. Yeah. And it when taken in seriously, will eat up the poison35:48 so that you can be whole again and so that the famine is addressed. A man went to the store 1 day36:01 because he needed some spaghetti sauce. So he went to get spaghetti sauce, and he picked up. He didn't know much about food. He picked up prego spaghetti36:13 sauce. He went to the store clerk, and he said, now I've got this sauce because we we're eating spaghetti.36:25 Now where do I get the tomatoes? The store clerk said, no. No. It's it's in there. Okay. Well, now where do I go to get the oregano?36:38 Oh, no. No. It's it's already in there. He said, well, well, where do I go to get the the basil? Oh, it's in there. What about the Italian sausage? It's all in there. What36:50 about the garlic? Oh, it's in there. What about all these other ingredients? You're looking all out here. But what you have for what you need37:02 has already been taken into consideration, and it's all in there. I don't know what you're looking for today, but if you need peace, it's in there.37:14 If you need order, it's it's in there. If you need justice, it's in there. If you need unity, it's all in there.37:25 If you need happiness, it's in there. If you need provision, it's in there. You're going shopping everywhere else when God is saying it's37:37 already been put in there. If you and I will take seriously the word of God, you will see when he put it together, He didn't leave any of the37:49 recipes out.
34:53
The Prison of the Past Tony Evans
Comments No comments yet. Start the conversation.
Comments
Keep it kind. Comments are public.