The Alternative

Dr. Tony Evans: Yesterday was good, it was bad, and it was ugly, and you can't change none of it. But you can press on, for your tomorrow is greater than your yesterday.

Guest (Male): This is The Alternative broadcast, featuring the timeless biblical teachings from the archives of Dr. Tony Evans. Looking back can help us remember where we came from, but if we don't turn our eyes forward, we'll never be able to move ahead with the purpose and direction God desires for us.

Today, Dr. Evans takes an important look at moving into our future with confidence. Let's join him.

Dr. Tony Evans: You can only discover that God is God when you're going through wilderness situations. Those are the trials, the testings, and the temptations in which you have to depend on God because your own resources are not enough. You can't make it on your own. The wilderness is dry, the wilderness is barren, the wilderness has no life. So if you're going to eat and drink in the wilderness, God has got to rain down manna from on high and bring water out of rocks.

Because that's what he did in the wilderness. The purpose of the wilderness is for God to show you he's God. So there is deliverance in order to reach destiny through a process of development. Well, they are on the verge of entering the promised land in Numbers chapter 14. They are right there. They're at the Jordan River. We sing our songs about crossing the river. They had crossed the Red Sea, that was in their deliverance. But now they're ready to cross the Jordan River because that's where their destiny lies.

They're on the precipice of their tomorrow. God tells them to go spy out the land, to go look at the land that he has promised them their future. Go take a look at the land. Spy out the land. They sent their 12 spies in to spy out the land. The spies come back in chapter 13, and they say in verse 27, "It's a good land, and it flows with milk and honey, and here is the fruit." They brought back this fruit that was enormous fruit to show how productive "milk and honey" means productive. How productive the land is.

But then they said, verse 28, "Nevertheless, it's productive, but we have a problem. The place is strong, the cities are fortified, the Anak are there." Verse 29, "Amalek is there in the Negev, the Hittites are there, the Jebusites are there, the Amorites are in the hill country, the Canaanites are living by the sea of Jordan." In other words, it's nice, but it's too many problems. The reason God takes you through the wilderness is to cut you off from your past in order that you might discover how great God is.

So when you see the problems in your future, you won't run from your future because you've seen God in the wilderness having disconnected from your yesterday. See, many of us can't get tomorrow because we're still carrying the baggage of yesterday. We're still so tied up to how we were messed up or jacked up or messed over in our yesterday, we can't take the step to tomorrow because we can't even get through today. And it's hard to get to tomorrow if you can't even make it today.

So what they did was they shrunk in the midst of the challenge. And look at what they said. When they heard about the challenges of their future, they grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The whole congregation said, "Would that we had died in Egypt, or we had died in this wilderness! Why is the Lord bringing us into this land to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones have become plunder. Would it not be better for us to return to Egypt?" So they said to one another, "Let us appoint a leader and let us return to Egypt."

They wanted to go back to yesterday. They wanted to go back to Egypt. They wanted to go back to the place they begged God to get them out of. Because when they were in Egypt, they said, "Deliver us from here, we want to get out of here, we want to leave here." Now that they're away from there, they run into a little problem and say, "Let's go back." In other words, they had left Egypt, but Egypt had not left them. They still had Egypt on their minds.

And what does that tell us? That tells us you can be delivered and still be a slave. In other words, you can be set free but still have yesterday running your mind. Deliverance provides you the opportunity for freedom. It is not in itself freedom. Whenever your yesterday looks better than your tomorrow, then that means you're still a slave. They hadn't mentally left Egypt. Look at what God says to them about his complaint, verse 22, chapter 14.

"Surely all the men who have seen my glory and my signs which I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness, yet they have put me to the test these ten times and have not listened to my voice." He says, "I showed them what I could do. I let them see. I let them see me do ten plagues. They got frogs coming up out of nowhere covering the land. I turned the water into blood. All the firstborn of the Egyptians died. They saw me open up the Red Sea. They saw me rain down manna, cornflakes from above. They saw me bring water out of the rock."

Now they're wondering, did I bring them this far to leave them? And now they want to go back to yesterday, the good old days. And they were destroying their future because they were too in love with yesterday. Hebrews 4 says their problem was they failed to mix the word of God with faith. Hearing the Bible isn't enough. Coming to church isn't enough. It's got to get a mixture going with faith. See, if you want cement to become concrete, you've got to mix it with sand and water.

If you don't mix it with sand and water, you won't get anything concrete. You can hear the Bible all you want, but if you don't mix it with faith, it won't become concrete in your experience. It won't become solid in your experience. And mixing it by faith isn't a feeling. Mixing it by faith is stepping out on it. It is acting on it. That's why it's called walking by faith. You've got to act on the word. Until you act on the word, it'll be spiritual theory. It won't be a concrete experience.

So what happened when they wanted to go back to yesterday? Now there is something you ought to remember from yesterday, and that is the faithfulness of God. That's the one thing you want to remember. In Egypt, ten times, he blew my mind. In the wilderness, he blew my mind. You want to remember that. But even that, you don't want to go back to because you want to see what new thing God is going to do. You don't want your testimony while I was ten, this is what God did for me.

That's good, and I'm glad he did something for you when you were ten, but now you're 50. What is God doing for the 50-year-old or the 51-year-old or the 60-year-old? Because his mercies are new every day. So don't just tell me what he did for you when you were a teenager. That was good when you were a teenager, because that was back then. But he's delivering you to another future now. He wants you to cross another Jordan. He wants you to have a new experience. He wants you to have a fresh testimony.

Actually, God answered their prayer because he says, verse 23 of chapter 14, "They shall by no means see the land which I swore to their fathers, nor shall any of those who spurned me see it." You say, well, how's that answering their prayer? Because in verse two they said, "Would that we had died in the land of Egypt or we had died in this wilderness! Would that we had died in this wilderness!" God says, "Okay. You want to limit your life to this wilderness? I'll give you exactly what you asked for. You're not going to see the promised land. You're going to die here."

The trip from Egypt to Canaan was a 35-day walk. It takes 35 days for two million people to go from Egypt to Canaan through the wilderness. It took them 40 years to make a 35-day trip. And it took them 40 years because they failed to take God seriously and kept looking back. They kept looking back and because they kept looking back, what should have taken 35 days. Somebody here knows what I'm talking about because you should have been a lot further by now.

By now you should have been a lot further in your life, a lot further in your family, a lot further in your finances, a lot further in your well-being. You should have been way down the road by now. Some of us here have died at 30, we're just not going to be buried until 70. We died a long time ago. We're just waiting for the funeral because we're living in yesterday. So they were going to lose out on their future. Moses said, "Please forgive them." Verse 19. God says, "I'm going to forgive them, but I ain't going to let them see my land."

So then what is forgiveness? Forgiveness is where God no longer requires a debt to be paid. Forgiveness means that God either cancels or limits the judgment. Well, the judgment was, I'm going to kill them right now. When God forgave them, he didn't kill them right now, but he didn't let them in the land. So he reduced the consequence, he didn't cancel it. He didn't cancel it, but he did reduce it. He let them live and he provided for them, but he provided for them in a place they should never have been stuck, in a wilderness.

So they didn't get it. It affected their kids. Verse 33, "Your sons shall be shepherds for 40 years in the wilderness and they will suffer for your unfaithfulness until your corpses lie in the wilderness." Your children are going to have to bear the burden of your rejection of me for 40 years, then I'm going to bring them into the blessing. But you've delayed your children's progress. And all we've got to do is look in our culture today and see where parents have messed up their kids.

Guest (Male): But even the consequences of our past shouldn't hold us back from going where God wants us to go. And we'll hear more on that when Dr. Evans returns in a moment to continue this message from his powerful series, Free at Last. If you've ever felt stuck in patterns that just won't let go, this collection is designed to help you find a way forward. In these 12 messages, you'll discover how to overcome anxiety and fear, move past discouragement, and stop letting yesterday define today.

You'll also gain practical insight into living with greater clarity, discipline, and spiritual confidence. We'd love to send you the complete Free at Last series as our thank-you gift when you make a contribution to support The Alternative broadcast ministry. And along with it, you'll receive Tony's companion book, Free at Last, a powerful resource that expands on these teachings and helps you fully embrace who you are in Christ. This is a limited-time offer, so visit tonyevans.org or call 1-800-800-3222 to get the details.

On the Unbound podcast with Dr. Tony Evans, guests bring resonant stories and perspective insights to help you live with clarity and purpose. Listen to conversations about faith and the Bible in the context of our modern day. Unbound means unhindered. The word of God is not bound. Unbound with Dr. Tony Evans, listen now. You can hear the Unbound podcast on your favorite podcast platform. Right now though, let's get back to Dr. Evans with more on gaining freedom from yesterday.

Dr. Tony Evans: So the question is, what do you do about yesterday? Well, I told you one thing. You use yesterday as a rearview mirror. You glance at it, you don't live in it. When you drive and you have a rearview mirror, you don't live in the rearview mirror. You're going to hurt somebody. If you go driving focused on the rearview mirror, you're going to hurt somebody because you can't move forward staring in the mirror. But you need to glance at the rearview mirror because it lets you know what you're leaving.

Rearview mirror shows you what's behind you. You need to glance at it and remember this is where I was. This is what God did. But you are moving forward utilizing the windshield because that glass is so much bigger. Because where you're going is supposed to be much bigger than where you've been. So you want to live your life moving forward with the windshield that is finding out God's perspective on anything, on every subject. You want to know what God thinks about it, how God feels about it, and what he expects from me regarding it so that I can see new movement of God.

You need to, here it is, here it is, here it is, repent of whining. Okay, let me say it again. Stop whining! It says all the way through the wilderness, the people of Israel grumbled and whined. Here they are, telling them how great the land is, God's going to give it to us, and it says, verse two, all the sons of Israel grumbled, whining. "Oh, I can't, I won't, never could, never would." My people, my daddy, my granddaddy, my great-granddaddy. All I got is manna, I want steak.

And it just whining and whining and whining and whining, and it says the anger of the Lord burns. Stop whining! I don't mean there aren't legitimate things to complain about. If something is wrong, it's wrong, but that's not whining. Whining is that spirit that constantly rejects negatively what God has said. How are we going to do this? Nobody's ever done that before. I don't think I can do this. Says they grumbled against God. Now, if something is wrong, you ought to complain about it. If something needs corrected, yeah, that's what he's talking about.

He's talking about grumbling against what God had told them to do. Says these people grumble always, and I'm tired of it, especially since I showed them what I could do. Says repent of whining. Okay, here's a big one, leaving yesterday behind. Stop hanging out with the ten. You missed that, didn't you? Moses sent 12 spies in. Two came back and says what God said we can do. Ten came back and said we can't do that. We can't do that.

See, the reason why a lot of us will live in the past and not move on to the future is because the folk we hang out with aren't people of faith. They aren't people who trust God. They aren't people who can see beyond yesterday. They want to get together and talk about yesterday. We're hanging out with the wrong people and wondering why we're stuck. Why we're not making any progress, why things are not better. Because we're hanging out with yesterday-thinking people.

You want to hang out with people who are trusting God for tomorrow because they believe what God has said, even though there are Nephilim in the land, even though there's a city called Jericho with a wall around it, even though there's an army called Ai. God said we can take it, let's go get it! We hanging out with the wrong people. We talking to the wrong folk on the phone. We talking to yesterday people. And we talking to them all night long. We talking to them all night long.

We talking to guys who are as messed up as we are, talking about he my homeboy, they my posse. You in the wrong gang! It was only two that were right, Joshua and Caleb. And see the problem with the yesterday people is you get to die with them. Because the yesterday people died in the wilderness too. Only two carried over and that was Caleb and Joshua because it said only those two believed God. So who you hanging out with?

Paul put it this way in Philippians 3:13. He says, "Forgetting those things which are behind, I press on." He says, "I had to let yesterday go." And that means the good, the bad, and the ugly. You got to let it go. You got to let it go. Now, I know what you're saying, you're saying that's easier said than done. Well, it's actually easier done than said. Because the way you let it go is you keep staring at that milk and honey. See, if you don't see the milk and honey, then you're going to hold on to the fish and garlic.

See, if you lose sight of the milk and honey, if you lose sight that God has a purpose, God has a destiny, God has a goal, then you're going to live in yesterday because yesterday is the only thing that's real to you. That's why he sent them in to look at the fruit. He said, "I want you to see what I'm talking about." Every now and then, God will give you a glimpse of tomorrow. He won't let you handle it all till you go get it, but he'll let you see that tomorrow is out there and he'll let you feel a little something-something about tomorrow.

You know what Paul had to forget? He had to forget some bad stuff, because he was a murderer. He was over there when they stoned Stephen to death, he was standing right there commissioning the execution. He's a killer. He persecuted the church of the living God. That man is a murderer. Paul says, "I had to forget the things that are behind." Because if every day I thought about the fact that I was a murderer, I could have never become an apostle. I could have never written 13 books in the New Testament.

He not only had to forget the bad stuff, he had to forget the good stuff. He sat at the feet of Gamaliel. He was of the Pharisees, one of the leaders. He was of the tribe of Benjamin, one of the leading tribes. He was according to the law, a perfect man. He had a lot of good stuff in his past. He said, "I had to forget that too." I couldn't just remember all the good stuff I made, I couldn't just remember I made an A in kindergarten. I couldn't just remember all the good stuff I did.

It was good back there. I'm glad I did it. But I'm pressing on. I got new mountains to conquer and new victories to experience and new enhancements. Some people in the Bible had to forget the ugly. Joseph had to forget the ugly because his brothers were ugly. Sold him into slavery, that's ugly. Accused of rape falsely, that ain't right. Forgotten in prison, that ain't right. None of that's right, that's ugly. That's just downright ugly.

He could have spent the rest of his life saying, "You boys did me wrong. You boys shouldn't have sold me into slavery. That was not fair. If y'all hadn't done this, I wouldn't have had to go through all that stuff just because y'all were jealous of me over a coat dream that I had. That was not fair, and I'm never forgive y'all for the rest of my life. I'm going to hold this thing, and what goes around comes around." But you know what Joseph said? "You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good to bring me to this place."

You got to let it go if you're going to be free to move forward. You got to let it go and not be held hostage to yesterday. I love Isaiah 43, verse 18 and 19. It says, "Forget the former things because I'm doing a new thing." Forget the former things, because I'm trying to do something new and you remembering something old. Put it on your mantelpiece and look at it while you walk by, but that's enough. I love Hebrews chapter 10 because look at what he says to the New Testament Christian in Hebrews chapter 10.

He says these words in verse 35, "Don't throw away your confidence, which has great reward. Don't throw away your confidence, for you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what is promised. For yet in a very little while, he who is coming will come and will not delay, but my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him." Don't go backwards, he says. Don't shrink back, because just like Israel, my soul has no pleasure in him.

I love when I see guys in a race and when I see them get to the tape and they lean. They lean. See, they get to the tape and they lean. You know why? Because they're pressing forward to get to the tape. When's the last time you seen a runner running going the other way? You know what? He's going toward a goal. Once you turn and go backwards, you are working against where you're trying to get to. Let it go. Yesterday was good, it was bad, and it was ugly, and you know the best thing about it? You can't change none of it.

None of it. It's permanently good, permanently bad, or permanently ugly. But you can press on and lean toward the high hope and the calling that is in Christ Jesus. Somebody bless the Lord for the future, for your tomorrow is greater than your yesterday.

Guest (Male): Dr. Tony Evans, sharing the timeless biblical truth of God's blessing and direction for those who will let go of the past and follow his calling. If you'd like to review this lesson in its entirety or share it with someone you care about, just ask about the message titled Freedom from Yesterday. You'll get the full-length version that includes content we didn't have time to bring you on the air. Better yet, request it as a part of Tony's complete Free at Last series, a 12-message collection designed to help you break free from the patterns that hold you back.

When you support the ministry with a donation, we'll send you the entire series along with Tony's companion book, Free at Last, which takes these principles even deeper and helps you fully embrace who you are in Christ. Visit tonyevans.org today to get all the details before time runs out. Again, that's tonyevans.org, or call us at 1-800-800-3222. Our resource center is open 24/7. That number again: 1-800-800-3222.

Most people associate oppression with demonic activity, slavery, or life under a dictator. But Dr. Evans says it can take many forms. Tomorrow, he talks about how we can find our way out of oppression and into freedom. Be sure to join us.