When you leave God out, He will carve out this unity to show you you were not supposed to do this without Him. Dr. Tony Evans says there's a direct link between how God relates to us and how we relate to each other.
You keep kicking God to the curb and you'll keep chaos on the agenda. This is the alternative broadcast featuring the timeless biblical teachings from the archives of Dr. Tony Evans. Unity among believers was one of Jesus' final prayer requests before His death on the cross. In today's message from the archives, Dr. Evans examines the power of a unified church and points out that we should all be shooting toward a common goal.
Let's listen in as he explains what that goal is. In Ephesians chapter 4, the Apostle Paul says in verse 3, be diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. He says unity is a spiritual issue, the unity of the Spirit, which means if you're not spiritual, then your propensity for disunity has exponentially increased.
Let's put it another way. The more spiritual you are, the more unified you're likely to be. The more non-spiritual you are, the more disunifying you're likely to be or become. For he calls it the unity of the Spirit. So therefore, wherever you see disunity being normalized, the Spirit is missing.
When a husband and wife decide to get a divorce, one or both parties have left the Spirit, even though both may be Christians. When churches divide, somebody has left the Spirit, because it is the Spirit's unity. He says preserve the unity that belongs in the Spirit in the bond.
The word bond means belt, like a belt holds up your trousers. He says be unified in the Spirit with a belt that holds together order or peace. He says in verse 4, there is one body, one Spirit, just as you were created in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father who is over all and through all and in all. The word is the word one.
One. Unity may be defined as oneness of purpose. Unity is oneness of purpose. Unity is not sameness of persons.
It's oneness of purpose. The enemy understands that God functions in a unified way. Therefore, if he wants to keep God out, he creates dysfunction because he knows God won't show up and show off where this unity has been normalized. So if he can get you fussing, cussing and fighting within yourself, within your home, within the nation or the races or the culture, if he can do that, then he knows God won't hear your prayers. In 1 Peter 3.7, he says the husband who's disunified from his wife, his prayers are hindered. But he comes right around in 1 Corinthians 7.5 and he says, but the husband and wife who come together in agreement can get through to heaven.
It was their unity. So the reason Satan has y'all fighting is because he knows your church attendance won't matter. He knows your prayer meetings won't matter. Unity is oneness of purpose. Jesus comes and he says, I'm coming to glorify the Father. The Holy Spirit says, I'm coming to glorify Christ because they are all in the glory, involved in the glory of God. That's why Romans chapter 16 verse 17.
In fact, I'll read that. He says in verse 17, I urge you, brethren, keep your eye on those who cause dissensions and hindrances, contrary to the teaching which you learned and turn away from them. For such men are slaves, not of the Lord Christ, but of their own appetites. Watch out for folk who want to turn race into a cudgel because they don't want unity. They want to keep division going. One of the things we have to do as counseling is determine which party or whether it's both parties are keeping this unity going because they don't want it fixed. Unity is not uniformity. It's not everybody being the same. It is everybody being on the same agenda.
Paul in 1 Corinthians 1 verses 10 to 13 condemns the church at Corinth for developing a personality cult where people were choosing personalities that they would align with that was creating havoc and disunity in the church. I was talking to a physician not too long ago and he said to me, what most people don't know is that they have already had cancer. I said, what do you mean? He said, most people have already had cancer. But what happened was the white blood cells identified it and said, we got a fool up in here that don't want to go with the program. The white blood cells quoted Romans 16 and said, mark the dissenter among you.
And they alerted the army, get him. And the army of the white blood cells and the strengthened immune system went and attacked the renegade cell before it could make itself at home in your body. He said, most have already had cancer, but because the immune system was so strong, it eradicated it before it became a problem. Paul says that the church is supposed to be so strong, Christians are supposed to be so mature that when the devil is trying to bring up disunity, there is an attack from the kingdom of God in order to get rid of it before it is able to metastasize so that the body builds itself up.
They tell me, you know you're healthy when your body heals itself before you even need medication. Now, the reason why this is key, God will create disunity if you want unity, but you don't want Him. Nimrod organizes the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11.
So let me look at Genesis 11 to show you how God reacts when you want unity, but you don't want Him. Verse 1 says, Now the whole earth used the same language and the same words. And it came about as they journeyed east, and Genesis East meant always journeying away from God, as they journeyed east that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. They said to one another, Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly, technology back then. And they used bricks for stones, and they used tar for mortar.
Now here it is. They said, Come, let us build for ourselves a city, civilization, and the tower, a religious symbol, whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name, that is, a reputation. Otherwise, we will be scattered abroad over the face of the earth. We do not want to be scattered abroad over the face of the earth.
God had already told them to scatter abroad over the face of the earth. They said, We ain't doing that. We ain't doing that. We're going to build our own civilization city. We're going to build our own tower, religious order, and we're going to move from theocracy to homocracy. Theocracy is God-centered. Homocracy is man-centered. So we're not going to start with heaven and come down. We're going to start with earth and go up. That's humanism. Humanism is when you start with man, and man dictates the heaven. So they said, We're going to build a tower, and we're going to tell heaven what to do.
So they said, We're going to do this, and we're going to grow, and we're going to have unity, and we're going to come together. We're not going to scatter. Verse 5, The Lord came down. I don't care how big you get. I don't care how much money is in your bank account, how popular you become, how much notoriety you have, how many people know you.
I don't care how top dog you get. God got to come down because you can't get but so high. God knows how to come down when you think you're getting too high. And that goes for individuals, nations, it goes for anybody.
It goes for the whole world as we're seeing right now. Dr. Evans will have more on that when he returns with the rest of the story in just a moment. Stay with us. Dr. Tony Evans' unparalleled mastery and deciphering the complexities of Scripture will ensure clarity in the face of confusion and illuminate the path towards hope. Arm yourself against the impending storm and let not the hour of reckoning catch you unaware. Be prepared for what's to come by picking up your copy of Thy Kingdom Come at TonyEvans.org. It comes with a bonus sermon series, Staying Right with God.
Do not be caught off guard. This radio program and Bible outreach ministry wouldn't be possible without the support of faithful backers, people just like you. And that's why I want to tell you about a special package we put together as our way of saying thanks when you make a donation to keep this ministry going. It starts with our current nine-part audio compilation called Returning to God in Unity, a series of messages that focus on how you and I can be restored to God, becoming a networked people who love Him and one another more and more.
It'll give you the encouragement and perspective you need to become a visible and verbal presence for God in a society that needs the positive influence of men and women of faith. And for a limited time, we're also including two outstanding books for our donors that go along with the audio messages. The first is a brand new release from Dr. Evans called Kingdom Kindness, a valuable work packed with practical teaching that'll help you recognize everyday opportunities to spread God's love as you step out in kindness. And the second is his already popular devotional book, Stronger Together, Weaker Apart, which focuses on ways to harness the power of prayer in overcoming anger, disagreements, and misunderstandings. This special three-part resource bundle will help you discover ways to heal relationships, find common ground with others, and impact our world in a meaningful way. Be sure to contact us right away to request it. You can do that online at tonyevans.org or by phone at 1-800-832-22.
I'll repeat that contact information for you after the second part of today's lesson. Here's Tony once again. It says, God came down to see, that is, investigate the city and the tower which the sons of men have built. Look at what they're doing.
Look at them. The Lord said, now the man was talking at first. Now God said, now I'm talking. The Lord said, behold, look, they are one people. Okay, unity. And they all have the same language.
Ooh, unity. And this is what they begin to do. And now, watch this, watch this.
You don't want to miss this. Nothing which they propose to do will be impossible for them. Oh, no, he didn't. Did you just hear what God said? God said, if we don't stop this, nothing that they propose to do will be impossible for them. But he's talking about people in rebellion.
He says, even the rebels, if they ever get unified, will become unstoppable. Even the evil people who are disobeying me, if I don't do something, they're going to get unity. So come, verse seven, let us go down. That's the Trinity. Come on, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, let us go down.
And they confuse their language so that they will not understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from over the face of the whole earth, and they stopped building the city. He shut that mama down. He will shut down black people, white people. He'll shut down Democrats' politics. He will say, y'all want to be unified without me? Watch this up in here. When you leave God out, he will carve out this unity to show you you were not supposed to do this without him.
He ain't playing up in here. So all of this chaos that you're seeing, if you want to blame somebody, blame God. Second Chronicles 15, verse six, says there was no peace to him who went in, to him who came out. There was no peace in the city. There was no peace in the nation. And verse six says, for God troubled them with every kind of distress. God shut it down. So you keep kicking God to the curb and you'll keep chaos on the agenda because you have opened the door for Satan. And not so in the family of God.
The PhD is no better than the GED. He says in Second Corinthians 5, 16, we no longer look at men after the flesh. We no longer start with their physical appearance, their whiteness, their blackness. He said, that's not where we start. Not in the kingdom.
We start with their character, not with their color. Paul told Peter, he says, your racism is embarrassing the gospel. And I'm gonna call you out on that because you're messing up the truth of who you are to be in Christ. But when there is unity, meditate on three verses, Psalm 133, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. And then he closes the short song with these words, from that space of unity, God commands a blessing. That's the only place I know in the Bible where a blessing is commanded. He says, you better bless them. You better, you blessing, you better flow into that life. You better flow into that home. You better flow into that church. You better flow into that community because they are operating on my definition of unity, not the culture's definition of unity, not the chaos definition of unity, but the biblical definition of unity because that's the only definition. The only definition on anything is God's definition.
If you disagree with that, you wrong, your people wrong, your mama wrong, your daddy wrong, your race wrong, they all wrong. Let God be true and every man a liar. In John chapter 17, John chapter 17, Jesus is praying. He's praying. It's called the high priestly prayer. Jesus is waxing eloquent with his father, praying for his people. And when he's praying for his people, he keeps using this word one.
I think it's used like 10 times, like verse 11. He ends verse 11 of John 17, that they may be one as we are. Notice, as we are, like us, oneness of purpose. Then it comes, he says in verse 21, that they may all be one, even as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that also they may be in us so that the world may believe that you sent me.
Ooh, he says, if I could ever get the church right, then the world will have something to look at. I mean, look at it. People do drugs together. They play ball together. You know, they get drunk together. Then they separate when it comes to the kingdom. He says, no, no, so that the world may see. Verse 22, second half of the verse, that they may be one just as we are one. We are the standard for unity. He says in verse 23, perfect them in unity.
Make them good at it. And then I love verse 24. Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me be one with me where I am so that they may see my glory.
I want them to see me at work. God's glory is where he manifests himself. I want them to see what I can do, but in order for them to see my glory, they gotta be unified. In order for God to answer prayers in your house, you and your mate better get spiritually unified. You praying for a wayward child, you and your mate better get spiritually unified. You got something going on in your sphere of business.
You Christians get unified. I reminded the story of peanuts, Lucy and Linus. Lucy came in and Lucy told Linus, change the channel.
He said, what you mean? I said, change the channel. Linus said, who gave you the right to tell me to change the channel? Lucy said, you see this hand? These are five fingers.
But when I do this, it's something terrible to behold. Linus changed the channel. Then he came and looked at his hand and he said, why can't y'all do that? See what the enemy was, he wants to keep everything separated because he knows if God ever unifies us like this, the power of heaven can be made manifest on earth. Dr. Tony Evans, talking about the incredible power we can realize in our unity as believers. Well, today's lesson, Returning to God in Unity, is the namesake for a powerful compilation of sermons Tony's preached in the last few years. Right now, when you get in touch with us and request this classic collection, we'll send you on CD or downloadable MP3s the full-length version of all nine messages from this series.
That includes material we won't have time to present on the air. They're yours as a thank you gift when you make a contribution to help us keep the alternative broadcast available on this station. Just visit tonyevans.org to make your donation and request the nine message compilation, Returning to God in Unity. And when you do, don't forget that we'll also include those two bonus gifts I mentioned earlier, the brand new Kingdom Kindness book, as well as the Stronger Together, Weaker Apart devotional book. Get the details at tonyevans.org or call us any time of the day or night at 1-800-800-3222 and one of our friendly team members will be happy to help. Again, that's tonyevans.org or by phone at 1-800-800-3222.
We'll return right after this. Far too many of us want to throw in the towel before we've thrown up the prayers. Dr. Tony Evans says Christians have a habit of underusing or overlooking our most valuable spiritual resource. Grace is available, but only at the throne and you can only approach the throne through prayer. You can deepen your connection with the Lord through our in-depth course on Kingdom Prayer at the Tony Evans Training Center. You'll discover how God has wired the world to work by prayer and experience for yourself how it connects heaven with earth and time with eternity.
You'll not only gain a new understanding and appreciation for prayer, you'll actually pray in transforming ways you've never experienced before. The course is intense, but you can work through it at your own pace and get all the help you need through our online forum. And, of course, there's custom content from Tony not available anywhere else. Connect with the Tony Evans Training Center at tonyevans.org.
It's like having a seminary on your smartphone or other device. Start today. TonyEvans.org.
Do you really love God as much as you say you do or even think you do? Dr. Evans says there's a surefire way to tell. We'll hear all about that next time on the Alternative Broadcast. I hope you'll join us. ? ?
