There has not yet been made the correlation between our social starvation and the spiritual departure from God that has infected our culture. Dr. Tony Evans says we poison the pot when we add worldly ingredients to the Lord's recipe for our lives and our society. And until the cause is addressed, the cure cannot be experienced. This is the alternative broadcast featuring the timeless biblical teachings from the archives of Dr. Tony Evans.
It sounds reasonable to say that we'll take a good idea wherever we can find it, but today Dr. Evans talks about the disaster that results when we don't take the time to consider the source. Let's join him in this classic message from 2 Kings chapter 4. A pastor went to visit one of his parishioners, a very elderly lady, and he just wanted to minister to her in this final season of life. She welcomed him in and had him sit in the living room. They began to chat. Situated before him on a little table was a bowl of peanuts. He asked his host, these peanuts sure look good. Would you mind if I had some?
Oh, she said, absolutely not. Feel free. So as they talked, he would pick up a peanut or two here, a peanut or two there, and after he'd been there for 30 or 40 minutes, he noted that he had eaten virtually all the peanuts. And so he said to his elderly host, I am so sorry. I've been talking and enjoying our conversation so much. I've almost eaten up all of your peanuts. Oh, she said, well that's really okay. I 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.
Sometimes you don't know what you're eating. Such is the case in our passage today. We're told in verse 38 that Elisha returns to Gilgal to be with the sons of the prophets. 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 the school, you would say today.
His job would be to equip the sons of the prophets in order to fulfill their responsibilities prophetically. 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't food. You see, God told his people, if you depart from me and go after other gods, I will close up the heavens and there will be no rain.
Your ground will become like iron, and things will not be able to grow. 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 other gods. The reason why Elisha goes to the school of the prophets is that it was the job of the prophets to explain to the people the spiritual reasons for their social dilemma, their agricultural dilemma, their economic dilemma, because the people would not automatically make the connection between no food and their relationship with God. They're just seeing it's not raining, they're just seeing stuff is not growing, they're just seeing we are hungry, and they're seeing their socio-economic, agrarian, agricultural reality, but not the spiritual cause of it. All of this chaos you are seeing has to do with a famine in the land. How do you know when you're in a famine? You are hungry and nothing you do satisfies. You look at all the time and the money and the meetings and the efforts and the gatherings and the complaints and the fights and the marches and the reactions and nothing seems to satisfy. Nothing seems to work, nothing seems to fit or to fix the dilemma because there has not yet been made the correlation between our social, economic, familial, personal starvation and the spiritual departure from God that has affected and infected our lives and our culture. And until that connection is made, you stay hungry. Hungry for peace, hungry for productivity, hungry for harmony, hungry for unity, hungry for oneness, hungry for order, hungry for a society that is not in decline. You wind up socially starving to death.
And until the cause is addressed, the cure cannot be experienced. And it's because of this famine that the prophets were being prepared to take the spiritual and the supernatural into the natural because that would be the only way people would ever eat. People would ever see heaven open, rain fall, the earth flourish, so there would no longer be a famine. So even the sons of the prophets are hungry. So Elijah says, we've got to feed these guys. He tells his servant to make a stew so that the sons of the prophets could eat.
But in verse 39, one of the guys gets a bright idea. It 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 in the stew, for they did not know what they were. He says, I want to sweeten the pot. I want to put some stuff in the stew to juice it up.
I want to put something in the stew to add a little more flavor. Now a gourd is basically a cucumber, but a wild gourd is a cucumber with poisonous pulp. So the poison is inside the gourd that looks like a cucumber. So you think it's a cucumber when it's actually poison, but it doesn't look like 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 only 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. When 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, O man of God, there is death in the pot. And they were unable to eat.
In other words, food poisoning set in, and they got sick as a dog. Whenever you go out to the world to get poisonous ideas, poisonous world views, through poisonous people who look good, it looks like it ought to work. It looks like it ought to fit. It looks like it'll make my life better. It looks like it'll heal my depression, my struggles.
It looks like it's gonna strengthen me. And we chop it 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 into 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 truth with wild gourds, it contaminates the truth, so that the truth that was supposed to set you free winds up killing you, because it has been contaminated with something that it cannot accept. And 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 two together, you cancel out God. God can be canceled by the wrong combination.
It says they ate it, and they said we cannot. We're gagging here on this mixture. You can't mix. If you mix diesel and unleaded, you ain't going nowhere.
Oil and water are not designed to mix. They're two different worlds, and that's what the Bible calls double-mindedness. You're going both ways, and you're trying to mix the two 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 if you illegitimately add to it, you add a curse to yourself, because God is smart enough not to need your help. Dr. Evans will come back with more of our message in just a moment, including a look at why God's recipe for life already includes every ingredient we need. First though, I wanted to tell you that the message you've been hearing today is just one lesson in Tony's classic 13-part series called Turning a Nation to God.
These lessons offer a biblical view of the issues behind today's disorder, discord, and divisiveness to help us see these problems and concerns through the lens of eternal truth. We're offering you the complete set of these messages on CD or digital download, along with a special bonus, a straightforward booklet that condenses these concepts into a practical guide titled How Should Christians Vote? If you reach out to the alternative broadcast with a donation today, we'll send you the booklet and all 13 messages in this sermon collection as our thanks for your support. Get the details and make your request online at TonyEvans.org, or give us a call any time of the day or night at 1-800-800-3222. We have team members ready to assist with your resource request 24-7. And for a deeper dive into today's topic, we offer a comprehensive book and companion Bible study called Kingdom Politics. Find out how you can get these added resources when you contact us at TonyEvans.org or by phone at 1-800-800-3222.
We'll get back to today's lesson right after this. In a world shrouded by fear, prophecy seeks to make sense of it all. Dr. Tony Evans' latest book, Thy Kingdom Come, reveals the secrets to deliver us through dark times. Now is the time to gain clarity in the midst of confusion. 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. Arm yourself against the impending storm. There is no solution to what you're seeing happening in our cities and our culture and our country and our lives as long as the spiritual is either marginalized or illegitimately mixed. And if you ever have folk who walk across your lawn, your green grass, they just walk across your lawn regularly.
Just kids like to do that. In the name of a shortcut, people are regularly cutting across God's truth with illegitimate additions trying to get to a destination. And they wonder why they're hungry, why they can't be satisfied, satisfied with peace and order and productivity and meaning. So Elijah's got to 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, bring me meal. Bring me meal. Meal is flour. They bring the flour to him. He throws it into the pot 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 the 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 stew because 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 its 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. 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 mixed 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 what people's motives are you don't even know what your own motives are you trying to figure out who to vote for because you don't like nobody and you just trying to work through all that. It's all mixed up. It's all in the stew. Elijah said bring me flour. Now flour was used for making bread. The primary use of flour was for bread. Jesus said men shall not live by 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. How was the problem resolved when the poison was already in it?
Here's how it was resolved. It had to be overwhelmed by something stronger and thicker and more powerful so Elijah knew if I get the flour in there it'll overwhelm the poison. You know eat it up so that now the stew that was made bad can be transformed.
There was no harm in the pot. He says in verse 42, give them to the people that they may eat. Verse 43 give them to the people that they may eat. For thus saith the Lord they shall eat and they shall have some left over.
Let's follow this. 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 to 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-educated poisonous ideas, rich poisonous ideas, popular poisonous idea from from people.
I mean you look at all these reality shows and then and all these counseling shows you better check and see whether there's any poison in the pulp cuz just cuz they look good and stand good and talk good and got all that going on you better ask is there poison in this pulp? We're in a crisis on every level and as Hebrews 12 says God shakes things up to get our attention. He shakes things up until you get the point 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 because the scripture says in 1st Corinthians chapter 1 and 1st Corinthians chapter 2 God makes a fool of the wisdom of this world.
God will downright embarrass you by thinking you can do this without him or have to add to him to get it done right. I 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 our culture is starving today but I do know where there's some flour and it when taken in seriously will eat up the poison so that you can be whole again and so that the famine is addressed. A man went to the store one day 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 preggo spaghetti sauce. He went to the store clerk and he said uh now I've got this sauce cuz we eating spaghetti now where do I get the tomatoes? The store clerk said no no it's in there. Okay well now where do I go to get the oregano? Oh no no 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. What 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 need 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. If you need order it's in there. If you need justice it's in there. If you need unity it's all in there. 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's 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 the recipes out. The first thing we do when we start taking God's Word seriously is to come to Jesus, confess that we're sinners, and receive his gift of eternal life.
And there's nothing you can add to or subtract from how that happens. Tony explains the process on the website at tonyevans.org. You can find it when you click the link at the top of the home page that simply says Jesus. There you'll discover what it takes to start a brand new life with the Lord as your guide.
You'll also find additional free resources to help you grow. Check it out today at tonyevans.org. Well today's message, called Poison in the Pot, is part of Dr. Evans' classic series examining the role our Christian faith plays in how we interact with our culture. Turning a Nation to God is a two volume 13 lesson sermon collection looking at what it means to be a citizen of heaven living here on earth. When you contact us and make a donation toward the alternative broadcast ministry, we'll say thanks by sending you the complete Turning a Nation to God set on CD or digital download, as well as a copy of that booklet I mentioned earlier, How Should Christians Vote?
Get in touch with us while this special offer is still available. And don't forget you can do an even deeper study of this timely topic with the help of Tony's in-depth book and Bible study called Kingdom Politics. Get all the details when you call our resource request line at 1-800-800-3222 or when you visit us online at tonyevans.org. Again that's 1-800-800-3222 or online at tonyevans.org.
I'll tell you what's coming up next time we're together right after this. The biblical roles of husbands and wives, the source of our authority as believers, understanding the concept of grace, winning spiritual battles, they're all important subjects but seem as different as night and day. Would it surprise you to know there's a common thread running through all four? You can discover what it is by taking the course on Ephesians in the Tony Evans Training Center. One by one you'll dig into the powerful themes of this book and make new discoveries about what Jesus' death accomplished, how to maintain unity at home and at church, what spiritual armor is all about. The course includes custom content from Tony not available anywhere else. Work through it at your own pace. Collaborate with other students. Get your specific questions answered through our online forum. Connect with the Tony Evans Training Center at tonyevans.org. It's like having a seminary on your smartphone or other device. Start today at tonyevans.org. No matter how much we try to protect our children, sooner or later they'll come face to face with the world's value system and start feeling the pressure to conform to it. Be sure to join us on Monday as Dr. Evans talks about the ways we can get our kids prepared.
