The Key to Your Reversal, Part 1

You must call it what God calls it in order for God to address it. Dr. Tony Evans says turning your circumstances around starts by turning yourself around and calling sin, sin. You're taking action steps that says I recognize it, I'm remorseful about it, I'm going to reverse what I am doing in relationship to it. Celebrating 40 years of faithfulness, this is the alternative with Dr. Tony Evans, author, speaker, senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, Texas, and president of the Urban Alternative. When you find yourself driving in the wrong direction, you look for a place to make a U-turn. Dr. Evans says the same is true when you're off course in life, and today he'll explain how doing that can reverse the spiritual consequences of sin.

Let's join him. When a person has a master key to a facility, that means that they can unlock any door. All doors are subject to this one key. Now, a person may have an individual key to a room or to their office, but when someone has a master key, it can address all the rooms. I am sure many of you have said, I need God to do something about my unique, special, applied-to-me situation. There are probably as many variables of scenarios in this room as there are people.

You have a unique set of circumstances that you are having to deal with that may be totally different or may be varied from your neighbor. But I want to launch our time together today by giving you the master key, because the key I'm getting ready to give you will unlock every door. You're not an exception to this key. It's a master key for whatever the circumstance or consequence is you are dealing with. But today I want to give you, based on the Word of God, the one key that will address the masses of scenarios that are present in the variety of people who are here. What is the master key that can give you hope about a reversal in your circumstances? Simply stated, the master key for the reversal of consequences brought on by sin is developing a lifestyle of repentance.

Let me say it again. The master key that opens up the door for the possibility of the reversal of your life's circumstances that have been brought on by sin is developing a lifestyle of repentance. You read all through the Bible and this word will keep popping up or one of its synonyms—one that I will focus on today, the word return—is brought up over and over again in a whole variety of circumstances where people saw the need to have their circumstances in life reversed. Why is this word the key word that you must understand if you want God to intervene at his prerogative into your consequences? Now we've already established that most of us, if not all of us, are facing various degrees of consequences due to sinful decisions we've made leading to regrets that we have and situations we wish we could reverse and go back and do over again.

The problem occurs is that you can't. The problem occurs is that some things, many things, and most things, once they hit the consequence level, wind up being out of our hands. And yet God does offer this word, predicated on his prerogative, to open the door for the many different scenarios that need reversing due to sinful decisions. So let's start off understanding why the word is needed before we get into what the word entails, the word repentance.

Repentance is necessary because of the existence of sin. Sin may be defined as any violation of the divine standard, any violation of the divine standard. The biblical word for it is sin. The biblical word is not mistake.

The biblical word is not bad habit. The biblical word is not my bad. The biblical word for the violation of a divine standard is the word sin. Let me hear you say sin.

The reason why I want you to say it is because it's not like a popular word, but it is the only word God recognizes when it comes to the need for the repentance that gives hope for the reversal of circumstances. So whenever we violate, transgress the standard of God, God says that's sin. Now the reason it is sin has to do with the nature of God. The Bible describes God as perfect and righteous in all of his ways. He is a perfect being. In the same way that you don't like trash or garbage, God doesn't like sin because of his nature.

In the same way that a doctor or nurse wants the surgical room sterile, no bacteria or viruses is because it contaminates the area. So God cannot have any relationship with sin and maintain his holy integrity. So that means sin has to be addressed before consequences can be addressed. What many people want is God to change their consequence without them facing their sin. Leave my sin alone, but get rid of the problems caused by it. Don't ask me to adjust my sin. Make me feel better, look better, be better. Help a brother out.

Help a sister out. There can be no dealing with the consequence unless we deal with the cause, and the cause is sin, which is an affront to a holy God and a violation of his divine standard. It is an understanding, this, that gets us into the process. Now, sin in the Bible violating God's revealed righteous standard is associated normatively with death. You saw it over and over again in this Ezekiel 18 passage. Why will you die? Repent so that you don't die. Romans 6 23, the wages of sin is death. James 1 15, when sin is completed, it brings forth death. Over and over again, Hosea 14 1, your downfall is because of your sin. So death is associated with sin.

Let me change it. Let me put it another way. Whenever you sin, you die. Okay, you have to stick with me here. Whenever you sin, you die.

Well, wait a minute. We don't drop dead every time we sin. The room would be empty. You know, we don't drop dead. In the Bible, death does not mean annihilation. Death does not mean the ceasing of existence.

That's never what death means in the Bible. In the Bible, death means separation. A separation occurs. When we sin, a death occurs because a separation occurs.

What's the separation? Fellowship with God is lost when sin is introduced. God must separate from sin since we are sinning.

He has to separate from us in terms of our personal relationship, which I'll explain in a moment. A distance occurs when sin is introduced into a scenario. When that gap occurs, because sin has been introduced, that space due to the gap caused by sin then becomes filled with consequences.

There is a spacing issue where consequences fill in the gap where the sin created the separation because God is no longer there to block it. Now, we are all familiar with physical death. You got a coffin, you got a casket, you got a cadaver.

Well, that person hasn't ceased to exist. It's just that the soul and the spirit has left the body. So there is a separation that has occurred causing the consequence that the body can no longer function because the life principle is no longer operating in it for it to function.

The separation has a deadly consequence when we talk about physical death. You remember when God told Adam, the day you eat the fruit, that same day you will die. But he didn't fall down dead that day. He didn't physically die that day.

Oh, but he died, because the Bible says that God removed him from the garden and from intimate fellowship with him. So there was a spiritual death. There was an emotional death.

It says fear took over and controlled him. Emotional death is when you can't live with you. People can become so distraught that they want to die or commit suicide because they can no longer live with themselves.

There has been a separation of themselves to themselves. Relational death. We hear couples say when they are getting a divorce, the death of a marriage. There is a relational death that can occur. There is economic death where your bills are controlling you and you're not controlling them.

And so there is the death economically that can occur. So there are all these kinds of deaths, and they're all death in the Bible because the biblical meaning of death is an illegitimate separation. And of course, then there is the worst death of all, eternal death. We call it hell. Eternal death is where a person is separated from fellowship with God forever.

All those are called death in the Bible. Now that we understand death, Dr. Evans will come back in a moment to give us a new perspective on life. First though, what you're hearing today is part one of Tony's life-changing series, U-Turn Reversing Spiritual Consequences. This collection will teach you what it takes to turn your life in a whole new direction, even if you've spent years dealing with issues like financial responsibility, substance abuse, sexual promiscuity, or family sins that go back for generations. To expand on these lessons, Tony has written and just released a helpful companion book entitled U-Turns, Reversing the Consequences in Your Life.

Together, these two resources can help you finally discover how to reverse flaws and failures that you thought were irreversible. Request them right away, and we'll send you the book and all 12 lessons in the U-Turn series on both CD and digital download as our gift when you make a donation to help support Tony's ministry. And if you're wanting to gain an even deeper understanding of this important subject, Dr. Evans has produced an in-depth U-Turns Bible Study Kit and DVD featuring custom content for six sessions, including tips on how to lead a group study on this topic. You can find out how to get this entire package of U-Turn resources when you visit us at tonyevans.org. Again, that's tonyevans.org. Or let one of our resource team members help you with your request day or night at 1-800-800-3222.

That's 1-800-800-3222. Well, Dr. Evans, we'll come back with more of today's message right after this. We are people with different backgrounds, different heritages. What will bring things together so that chaos doesn't rule? Dr. Tony Evans' book, Oneness Embraced, provides the biblical prescription for racial reconciliation.

God's goal is the advancement of His kingdom, and in order to advance it properly, He has black Christians and white Christians, and they all should be shooting toward the same goal. A proven pathway toward lasting unity. Oneness Embraced, available now at tonyevans.org. So you must now clear your mind of limiting the definition of death to a funeral and understand that death is any illegitimate separation. So then what is life? Life is the coming together of things that should not be separate. It is the Spirit in the body.

It is the relationship on track. It is the economics in harmony. Life, or what the Bible calls eternal life, is not a place. It's heaven.

It's an experience. Life in the Bible is experiencing God's reality in harmony with you and in the various scenarios of your life. So if you are a dead man walking or a dead woman walking in some category, there has been an illegitimate separation that needs to be harmonized again. And the word that God uses to bring the illegitimate to the legitimate is the word repent. That is His word of turning death into life.

Sin is the word for taking life and turning it into death. That's why He could speak in this passage and says to the wicked man, if you deal with your transgressions, you will live. He says to the righteous man, if you go to your transgressions, you will die.

So these are polar ends, death and life, and there are various shades in between. He says the answer to that is repent. So that's why repentance is the master key for whatever the scenarios are today. Opening the door based on God's prerogative to reversing, limiting, canceling, or giving you the capacity to handle consequences.

It's His prerogative. But you don't even get positioned for that prerogative without the word repent. That is the word. So let me now give you the meaning of repentance.

What does it mean? Repentance is defined as an internal resolve and determination to turn from your sin. Repentance is an internal resolve and determination to turn from your sin.

Sin creates a broken relationship where consequences brought on by Satan or situations or even what God allows to enter into your life because there has been a rupture. Repentance is God's way of sewing back together the rupture with Him. When the rupture with Him is sewn back together through repentance, the possibility of reversal of consequences now exists. Repentance is the internal resolve and determination to turn from your sin. Without that internal resolve and determination, thus no real repentance, then you and your consequences must learn to live together the best way you can, because you are stuck with them. That is why many people who don't want to deal with their sin go to other ways to deal with their consequences. They try to buy their way out of them, entertain their way out of them, find relationships to cause them not to think about it. And they're constantly going to things to distract them from the consequence because they don't want to deal with the sin. But without dealing with the sin, you don't get God's help with the consequence. You get everybody else's help. So you may get temporary distraction, like drugs. They can give you a temporary distraction and a good feeling, but they've not dealt with the issue. And they show it's quiet in here right now. But that's okay.

It's that kind of messy. God says, if you will repair your relationship with Me through the internal resolve to deal with your sin, you have set the stage because I'm now back hooked up with you to intervene in your consequences, based on, of course, His divine prerogative. When John the Baptist came on the scene in Matthew chapter 3, verses 1 to 12, he comes on the scene and he says, repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.

Kingdom means the rule of God. If you want to see God rule your situation, you've got to repent first. If you don't repent first, don't bother to pray about it. Don't waste your time to ask God to deliver you from a consequence you're unwilling to repent of, because you're wasting your time. The rule of God comes, he says, when you repent. Repentance is the master key to reuniting your relationship with God so that He is free to intervene in the consequences at His prerogative.

It's a change of mind with a view of reversing a direction. Let me tell you the ingredients that you need to stir together to get a real repentance. To repent starts off with a recognition of sin. There is a recognition of sin. Because, see, if you don't believe it's sin, then you don't need to repent of it. It is sin because there's a violation of a divine standard. That's what makes something sin.

So you must recognize it to be so. 1 John 1.9 says, And if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. The Greek word confess means to say the same thing.

That's what the Greek homologuia means, to say the same thing. You must say about that thing what God says about it, not what your neighbors say about it, not what the television says about it, not what your peeps say about it, not what you think about it. You must say the same thing that God says about it. If God says it's a sin, don't call it a bad habit. God says it's a sin, don't call it a mistake. If God says it's a sin, don't just say, you know, I'm only human. You must call it what God calls it in order for God to address it and to repair the relationship. So that must be the recognition of sin.

You must confess and say the same thing. Dr. Evans will bring us a final thought about how to tell if we're truly remorseful for the things we've done wrong when he returns in a moment to wrap up this message. As I mentioned earlier, today's teaching is just one part of 12 powerful life-changing lessons in the comprehensive two-volume U-turn series, and it's available along with Tony's brand new book, U-Turns, Reversing the Consequences in Your Life. For a limited time, we'll send you both of these resources as our gift when you help us keep Tony's teaching on this station. Visit tonyevans.org today to make your donation and request your copy of the U-turn series. And don't forget to look into obtaining the companion U-turns Bible Study Kit, including the DVD featuring six video lessons from Dr. Evans. Drop by tonyevans.org today or call our resource center at 1-800-800-3222.

Team members are standing by to help you day and night. Again, that's 1-800-800-3222. Well, tomorrow, more from Dr. Evans on why it's never too late to make a U-turn in life, even if you're so far off course that you feel like you can never find your way home to faith again.

Right now, though, he's back with these final comments for today. How do you know if you are really remorseful? How do you know that this thing is real, that you really want to deal with it? Fruit. In other words, you are doing something that demonstrates you want a reversal. You are taking action steps that says, I'm going to do something differently because I recognize it, I'm remorseful about it, and so I'm going to reverse what I am doing in relationship to it. The Alternative with Dr. Tony Evans is brought to you by the Urban Alternative and is celebrating 40 years of faithfulness thanks to the generous contributions of listeners like you.