So many people today are operating on facts who don't know the truth.
Dr. Tony Evans says facts alone are only part of the picture. It's the foundation of truth they rest on that's most valuable. God's goal for His kingdom people is for us to be people of the truth. This is the alternative broadcast featuring the timeless biblical teachings from the archives of Dr. Tony Evans. A popular declaration you may hear nowadays is, I'm living in my truth. But today, Dr. Evans addresses the shortcomings of settling for a life confined to the philosophy of one's own desires, limitations, and understanding.
Let's join him as he takes a look at unleashing kingdom truth. Many of you will recall that during my seminary years, one of the things that we did to try to get income as we matriculated through school was house sitting. This was a favorite occupation of seminary students because you got to live large for a week. When you went into mostly these palatial homes of people, you saw things that as a student you could only dream of. The owners of the home would typically give guidelines to govern how they wanted things handled during their physical absence because it was their home.
Whether it was guidelines for the care of the animals or the care of the kids or whatever the nuances were for the jurisdiction that we were entering into when we entered into their home. God has a sphere of jurisdiction. It's called His kingdom. It is the sphere of His authority from which He operates.
From Genesis to Revelation, you've heard it many, many times here. God's rule, that is His kingdom, the word means rule or authority, is the space He occupies to carry out His will. Within this jurisdiction, this kingdom realm, is His governance and guidelines, which He calls His truth. Jesus said, my kingdom is not of this world and those who understand that understand I've come to give the truth. And everybody who is of the truth listens to me. So God's goal for His kingdom people is for us to be people of the truth.
When Pilate heard that, he raised the question. In verse 38, he says, what is truth? What he was saying was, nobody agrees on truth.
Nobody is in the same page. What do you mean you come to do the truth? Pilate's question is a contemporary question because the concept of truth has been abandoned by the culture. It has been replaced with a multiplicity of isms because the question is daunting. Even though it may not be stated in those exact terms, there is a disagreement today on what is truth. There is pragmatism.
Truth is what works. Positivism. Truth is what science validates. There is relativism. Truth is only what we can logically conceive of. There is agnosticism. We just don't know what truth is. There's fideism, which says truth is merely subjective and personal. And in this collage of confusion about what truth is, people are scurrying all over, getting all kinds of nuances about truth.
They listen to talk shows to hear babble by the hour. They go on chat rooms or Instagram or Twitter, TikTok, the internet, Facebook, to hear information ad nauseam, constantly shifting their belief system based on the information they are hearing at the moment because they haven't settled the question what is truth. And as a result of this, there is cultural chaos and confusion since nobody's agreeing with anybody else about what the bottom line is of truth. And so we are awash today in opinions. We are awash today in chaos. There's philosophical chaos as people doodle with ideas about the meaning of our own existence.
There is social chaos because we can't get to the truth about the issues of race and culture. There's gender chaos. What is a man?
And what is a woman? There is all manner of confusion with psychological chaos. People not being able to bring order to their thinking and to their identity. Moral chaos and the worst kind of chaos of all spiritual chaos. People are perpetually going to surveys and polls to find out what percentage of the folks agree, like margins determine truth. So we are awash in this chaos and confusion because like Pilate, people are confused today about what is truth. As 2 Timothy 3 verse 7 says, forever learning and never coming into the knowledge of the truth.
They get their high school diploma, their BA, their MBA, their PhD, and wind up being educated fools. Because the answer to the question, what is truth, has not been solidified. So we're educating ourselves into crazy. Because the question on the floor is what is truth?
Is there something I can bank on to know what truth is? Well, what would you say to an unsure Pilate who said, I think this is the button I ought to push? You would probably change planes. What would you say to an unsure pharmacist who says, I think this is the medicine I ought to give you? You'd probably go to another pharmacy. What would you say to a doctor who says, I'm guessing but I think this is where I should cut?
Probably change doctors. Because when it comes to your life and your well-being, you don't want guesswork. You want to know what the truth is.
Because there are those areas of our lives where we want a fixed standard and we don't want guesswork defining what we do. But today we are awash in this thing. And so the question is what will be the determiner of truth for me, you, and us? What will determine it? Will it be our feelings?
The problem is they change. I feel one way today, another way tomorrow. So if truth is based on my feelings, then I'm going to vacillate. Will it be my intellect?
Will it be how smart I am? But the problem there is that I'm finite. I'm continually learning more information. So what my mind may say is okay today may change tomorrow. And if you watch enough news, enough food, you can drink coffee, you can't drink coffee. You eat meat, you don't eat meat.
You go all over the place because stuff keeps changing. Will it be our moral instincts? What we believe to be right and wrong, but they differ from person to person. One person thinks it's right, another person thinks it's wrong.
So they differ. So how do we arrive at this thing truth? Because Jesus said, I've come to give truth. And people who are of the truth listen to me. And so the question is, are you, we, and us, people of the truth?
And if we are, the question of pilot is relevant. What is it? What is truth? We'll return with more from Dr. Evans on unleashing kingdom truth in just a moment. But first I want to let you know that you can dig deeper into today's subject with the help of Tony's 112 page paperback, One Kingdom Under God.
It'll help you put what you're learning about God's truth to work as you begin to think differently about your life, your relationships, and your walk with God. Discover how to unleash real change, not just for yourself, but for the people you care about. Contact us today and let us send you a copy of One Kingdom Under God.
It's yours when you make a contribution to help us keep the alternative coming your way each day. Along with the book, you'll also get all 12 full-length messages in our current series, Unleashing the Kingdom. You can get the details of this limited time offer right now at tonyevans.org or call our 24-hour Resource Center at 1-800-800-3222 and let one of our team members help you.
That's 1-800-800-3222. Well, Dr. Evans will come back with more of today's message right after this. If you're like most Christians, there are people in your life who know you but may not know Jesus. You really want to do something about that, but don't feel equipped to share your faith effectively.
In other words, maybe if you knew more you could do more. Well, that's where the Tony Evans Training Center comes in. It's an online Bible school with classes that will take you deep into the most important core concepts of the faith. You can start with our free introductory course on evangelism, then move on to subjects like spiritual warfare, marriage building, maturing in the faith, and many more. The content is challenging, but you can move through it at your own pace anytime you're online. There's also lots of custom content from Tony and an online forum where you can get your specific questions answered.
Go to tonyevans.org and follow the link to the Tony Evans Training Center. It's like having a seminary on your smartphone. Jesus makes the statement, my kingdom is not of this world. My jurisdiction, the place where I operate from, my house, my crib, is not of this world. It's in this world, but it's not from this world.
It operates in the world, but it is not sourced in this world. It comes from another realm. God's view of truth is that the spiritual must always inform the physical. The kingdom up there must inform the life down here.
The invisible world must inform the world of the five senses. Because truth, which derives from his kingdom, is not sourced down here. So if you start down here, you're starting at a deficit when it comes to truth.
What our society wants is they want to impose our rules on God's house and wonder why there's chaos and conflict in the midst. So there's a question on the floor today. And it is a key question for me, you, and us. And Pilate asks it, what is truth? Truth is an absolute standard by which reality is measured.
Let me say it more simply. Truth is God's view on any subject. Truth is God's view on any subject. And the reason why truth is God's view on any subject is because he's perfect.
Perfection can't make a mistake on any subject or else it's no longer perfect. Romans 3-4 puts it this way, let God be true and every man a liar. So whenever you disagree with God, you're wrong, not him. Whenever your mama and daddy disagree with God, they're wrong, not him. Whenever your professor at the university disagrees with God, they're wrong, not him. Whenever you disagree with God, you're wrong, not him. Whenever the politicians disagree with God, they're wrong, not him. When the economists disagree with God, they're wrong, not Him, because truth is an absolute standard by which reality is measured that it is God's view on every subject matter.
No exceptions. Until that becomes your view of truth derived from the spiritual. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. So the physical world only exists because the spiritual world made it. In the beginning, God, God is spirit, created the physical, the heavens and the earth. The spiritual brought about the physical.
Not only does the spiritual want to bring about the physical, the spiritual wants to run the physical. Truth trumps feelings. Don't get me wrong, feelings are real. You can't deny how you feel, but truth trumps it. The fact that I don't feel one and one equals two is irrelevant. It's irrelevant that I don't like that one and one equals two. It's irrelevant that my mother and daddy told me one and one equals three.
All that's irrelevant. How I feel about it, how I think about it, all that is irrelevant when it comes to truth. Now, I may really feel one and one equals three. It may be in my blood that one and one equals three, but the fact that I feel it does not give it the weight of truth, no matter how committed I am to the emotions that I'm feeling about it.
Because there is a mathematical absolute standard that one and one equals two. Not only does truth trump emotion, truth goes deeper than facts. You can have the facts and not have the truth. You have a headache, that's a fact. You know if your head is hurting. You go to Walgreens, you get Excedrin PM because you have a fact that your head is hurting. You take the Excedrin PM, but your head is still hurting.
You go to the doctor to find out you have a tumor. You had the fact, but you didn't know the truth. The fact was correct, your head was hurting, but you did not have the underlining foundation information to tell you the truth. So many people today are operating on facts who don't know the truth, which is why they can't get to the root of what they need to deal with because they're dealing with facts. People say, I know my truth. No, you know your facts. You may not know your truth because truth goes deeper than facts because it is the foundation for facts.
It's a big difference having a headache that's a migraine and having one that's birthed by a tumor. Those truths require a whole different approach. Those facts determine a whole different approach. So Jesus says that I have come into the world to testify to truth. He says about himself, I am the way, the truth. The Bible calls the Holy Spirit, the spirit of truth. All subjects, no matter what the subject is, is to be viewed, analyzed and concluded based on what God says is true. And therefore truth does not start in this world.
It is in this world, but it's not sourced from this world. Today we live in a cancel culture. If you say something that the powers that be don't agree with, they can shut you down and they have been doing that. Not too long ago, they took down one of my messages off of one of the social medias because I was declaring what the Bible said about a certain issue. It was clear that the Bible said it, but it was going to be too offensive to many of their people so they canceled it, even though it could be validated that the Bible said it.
So they pulled it down, they canceled it. God says in John chapter 10, verse 35, scripture cannot be canceled. It cannot be annulled, that means canceled. Let me put it this way, when you cancel God's truth, God's truth will cancel you.
So you need to know that. His truth will win because he cannot be canceled, therefore his truth cannot be canceled. So when you think you've canceled him, you just canceled you. You've canceled your prayer, you've canceled divine help, you've canceled divine assistance, you have done a whole lot of canceling, think you canceled because he says his truth based on his word cannot be canceled, cannot be annulled. So when we operate with a secular worldview, he says, my truth is not of this world, therefore if you are a worldly Christian, you will not experience his kingdom engagement. Dr. Tony Evans, with important words on making God's truth our truth. Now before we go today, I want to remind you that what you've been hearing is part of a brand new sermon collection called Unleashing the Kingdom. The full length versions of all 12 messages in this series are available to review again or to share with a friend or family member. Best of all, we're making them available for a limited time as our gift when you make a contribution toward the alternative broadcast ministry. Along with the audio messages, we'll also include Tony's powerful paperback, One Kingdom Under God, as well as our thanks for making this ministry possible.
This is a limited time deal, so don't miss your chance to take advantage of this offer while it's still available. All the details are waiting for you at tonyevans.org. Again that's tonyevans.org, or get some in-person help from one of our resource center team members when you call 1-800-800-3222. Feel free to call any time of the day or night.
That number again, 1-800-800-3222. There are many things we face in life that can be difficult and scary for us, but there's one source of dread you have the ability to absolutely circumvent. And here's what Dr. Evans has to say about it. One of the great fears in life is the fear of death and the uncertainty that lies beyond the grave. Well, you can change uncertainty into certainty, and you can do it right now, right where you are. Stop what you're doing, go to God, and say, God, I want certainty about my eternal destiny. I acknowledge Jesus as the Son of God who died on the cross for my sins, and I'm believing in Him now for my salvation, which He promised to give me if I came to Him for it. Thank you for giving me of my sins and for the new certainty of eternal life. Jesus said, everyone who is of the truth listens to My voice. Tomorrow, Dr. Evans will show why a culture that collectively turns a deaf ear to God is destined for chaos, and why the intervention of believers willing to heed kingdom truth is desperately needed. I hope you'll join us for that.
