Rick Warren - Why You Don’t Need to Fear the Future—Part One

Hello, everybody, This is Pastor Rick's Daily Hope with Rick Warren.

I'm really glad you're here. Today we're continuing our series

from Psalm twenty three called Living in the Goodness of God.

It's all about how God's goodness meets you right where

you are and brings hope even in difficult seasons. And

let's join Rick right now for part one of a

message called why you don't need to Fear the Future.

Today we continue in our series a Psalm twenty three,

the most important to our most famous chapter in the

entire Bible. It's only six verses, but it's gives us

a dozen pictures of the goodness of God. Now, you know,

as I've been teaching this psalm to you, I've studied

all the scholars, I've read all the commentaries, and a

lot of commentaries Biblical commentaries actually get this psalm wrong wrong.

They say this is a psalm of David's confidence and

David's faith. Not They're all wrong about that. It's not

even about David. It's not about a shepherd's David being

a shepherd. It's not about sheep. It's about the goodness

of God. It's about all about God. You know a

lot of times we talk about you being committed to

Jesus or you being committed to God. This psalm turns

that upside down. This psalm is not about your commitment

to God. It's about God's commitment to you to you,

And in this psalm, God says I'm going to do

twelve things for you. They're metaphors and you have to

explain him, but he says, I'm going to do these

twelve things to you because I'm a good God and

I love you, and these are the things I've committed

to do for you. It's one hundred percent about God.

Now we're drawing now toward the end of this series,

I want us to read the whole psalm again together.

It's only six verses, but I want you to read

it aloud with me, and I want you to emphasize

the twelve times it talks about God, because this psalm

is not about you. It's about what God does for you.

So up here on the screen, let's read this together.

The Lord is my shepherd. I have everything I need.

He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads

me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads

me in the right paths for his namesake. Even when

I walk through the valley of the shadow of Death,

I will fear no evil, for you are with me.

And then he says, maybe, thank you, your rod and

your staff comfort me. You prepare a banquet for me

in front of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil,

and my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy will follow

me all the days of my life, and I will

dwell well in the House of the Lord forever. Now

I want you to notice versus. This psalm begins and

ends with the Lord. The Lord is my shepherd, and

it ends with and I will dwell in the House

of the Lord forever. This psalm is all about God.

It's all about his goodness to you. If you missed

any in this series, I would encourage you to go

back and listen to the twelve things that God has

said he wants to do for you, because He is

a good God. Now today we look at this last verse.

Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days

of my life. That's a promise. And I will dwell

in the House of the Lord forever. That's heaven, that's future. Now,

any time you start worrying, you need to remember the

last verse of Psalm twenty three. Have difficulty with the future,

you tend to get anxious about the future. You get

fearful about the future. You get worried about the future.

You feel anxiety welling up within you over the future.

You need to remember this last verse because this last

verse tells us the three reasons you never need to

fear the future. If you're a believer, you never need

to fear the future because of the three things that

it tells us in this last verse. Now, if you're

taking notes, you might just write this down. Here's the

first reason. I don't need to fear the future because

God's goodness is watching over me. I don't need to

fear the future because God's goodness is watching over me.

The Bible says, surely goodness will follow me all the

days of my life. Do you know that God, in

his goodness is always paying attention to you? Did you

know that you've never had a second of your life

God was not watching you. God is always paying attention

to you. Why because He created you to love you

and he's a good God. So how in the world

can God be interested in me. There's seven and a

half billion people in the world. The God who's created

trillions of stars can surely care about seven billion people

all at the same time. You don't understand how big

God is if you don't understand that God can pay

one hundred percent attention to you while paying one hundred

percent attention to everybody else too. He's God. There has

never been a moment in your life. God was not watching.

He knows every detail of your life. He knows when

you get asked indigestion and when you get a few

other things in your stomach. He knows. There has never

been a moment. He knows the highs and lows, the

goods and the bads, the ups and downs. He's paying

attention to you right now. In fact, God knows you

better than you know yourself. God knows the details of

your life, every one of them. He knows more details

about you than you do. Why. He is a good God.

And the goodness of God is following me all the

days of my life. So one forty five, Verse twenty

says this, The Lord watches over all who love him.

God's goodness is watching over He doesn't miss any details,

and not only does he watch over you, he actually

protects you. You are protected from thousands of things you

don't even know. You missed, accidents that you could have

gotten into, problems that you could have created, decisions that

you made, and God said, now we're not going to

let the consequences of that one happen. Right now, How

does God watch over you? How does God protect you? Well?

One of the ways this may shock you is angels.

The Bible as God created angels to watch over you. You said, witmen,

are angels real? Oh? Yes, they're very real. The Bible

tells us that. Now, let me say this. I don't

have time to teach a whole message on it. I

will sometimes I'll come back and cover angels. But there's

a lot of phony bologna about angels out there. There's

a lot of myths, there's a lot of lies, there's

a lot of misconceptions. There's a lot of things that

people think about angels that just aren't true. And so

we'll have to come back and study that. But let

me just say a couple of things. You don't when

you die. You're not going to become an angel when

you die, When you go to heaven, you're gonna be

a person. You're not gonna have any wings. Say hate

to tell you that you're not gonna have any wings

in the first place. Angels don't have bodies. They don't

have human physical bodies, so they are the spiritual beings.

You don't talk to them. I have walked with the

Lord now for over fifty years. I've never had personal

contact with an angel. Never except kay thought i'd throw

that in there. Okay, But they don't have physical bodies.

You don't talk to them. You probably never have any

interaction with him in your life. But they're out there

watching over you. They are protecting you. They are actually

created by God to encourage circumstances that encourage you. The

Bible says in Psalm ninety one, verse eleven, God orders

his angels to protect you wherever you go. So they're

like invisible helpers. And there are many ways they do this,

but one of the ways is they create circumstances that

you don't even know how in the world did that happen. Well,

an angel is in action. I could give you thousands

of examples of this that I've seen over the years.

Let me just give you one. Several years ago, a

young woman who's pregnant came to me for counsel. Came

to the church office, and she had discovered that she

was carrying a DOWNS child, a Down syndrome child, and

she was debating, am I going to terminate this pregnancy

get an abortion, or am I going to keep the baby?

Am I going to give it up for adoption? While

I raised the child, she was very, very fearful, is understandable.

And I showed her some scripture like Psalm one thirty

nine that says God planned you before you were born.

God planned every day of your life when you were

in your mother's womb. Abortion circuits, the will of God.

God wanted you, made you were a person because He

created you and thought you up. And she made the

decision she was going to keep the baby. So she

went home, and I decided I would just write her

a little note of encouragement. So I took out a postcard,

I wrote some Bible verses on it, wrote a little

prayer and just a couple words of encouragement some of

the stuff I'd shared with her. And I mailed that

postcard to encourage that woman. The post post office send

it to the wrong address. And so she didn't get it.

But the woman who did get it read it and

decided that she would hand deliver it to that other woman.

So she goes, she looks up the address it's on

the obviously on the postcard, and she goes to the

woman's house, knocks on the door and says, your pastor

wrote you a word of encouragement, but it came to me,

and I'm going to give it to you right now.

But I want you to know I have a down

syndrome child, and I'm going to help you. Now. I

think an angel rerouted that postcard, okay, because that kind

of stuff just doesn't happen. What's the logic of how

rare a down syndrome child is of that card went

to somebody else who could help her. You don't even

know how many times you've been helped by the goodness

of God. But God says, I my mercy and my

goodness will be with you always. Now it says, surely

goodness will follow me all the days of my life.

What does that mean? Well, doesn't mean that only good

things will happen to you. Obviously that's not true. A

lot of bad things happen, a lot of disappointments happened.

David had bad things happening. The guy who wrote this

doesn't mean only good things will happen to me. When

the Bible says surely goodness will God's goodness will follow

me every day of my life, it means that God

will ensure that good will come out of everything that

happens to me, even the bad stuff. That's the promise.

Not everything that happens to you is good, But surely

goodness will follow me means God will bring good even

out of the bad stuff, the evil stuff that happens

to you. You cannot control what happens to you in life,

but you can be sure this if you are if

the Lord is your shepherd, God will always bring good,

always out of bad. Anybody can bring good out of good.

God specializes bringing good out of bad. And that's the

great promise of Romans eight twenty eight, which says this,

we know that all that happens to us is working

for our good, doesn't say it's all good. It says

it's working for our good. If this is a promise,

if we love God and are fitting into his plans,

all things do not work together for good. For everybody.

If you're going in the opposite direction of God, if

you're ignoring God's plan for your life, if you're not

trying to live in God's love, all things are not

working for good. They're all working for bad in your life.

But this is a promise that those who love God,

that those who really want to go God's way, who

want to follow God's purpose. He says, Okay, if you

really want my will in your life, even the bad

stuff that happens to you, I will bring good even

out of that. Now. Of course, when you're going through

a bad time, you never never see the good. In

the moment when my son, Matthew, my youngest one, took

his life from mental illness, in the moment of that,

I could not see any good out of it. It

was a bad thing. It's still a bad thing. It's

still a bad thing. But has God brought good out

of it? I couldn't tell you all the good that

God has brought out of how it's helped other people,

and how God has used k used me, and used

our family to help other people through crises and problems.

But in the situation you don't see any good. But

God is working Why Because his goodness follows me every

day of my life. Now, the second reason that you

never need to fear the future, no matter what happens. First,

because God's goodness is watching over me. The second reason

is because God's grace is working in me. God's grace

is working in me, while goodness is working around me,

and it's watching out for me. God's grace is working

in me. At that moment, the Bible says, surely, not

just goodness, but mercy will follow me all the days

of my life. What is mercy? Mercy is grace and action.

That's what it is. And so when I say God's

grace is working in me, I'm talking about is mercy.

It's grace in action. Isaiah sixty, verse ten says this,

I will have mercy on you through my grace. Now,

let me explain this. When God says grace, goodness and mercy,

you're gonna follow you all the days of your life.

What's the difference between God's goodness and God's mercy. Well,

you might write this down here, it's up here on

the screen. In the first place, God's goodness is when

God gives me what I don't deserve. That's goodness. God's goodness.

That's his grace. God gives me what I don't deserve.

I don't deserve all the blessings I have in life,

and you don't either. You don't the air you just breathed.

Did you deserve that? The fact that your heart just

took a beat? Do you deserve that? The fact that

you live in a free country? Do you deserve that?

Most of the things in your life are simply gracious gifts,

and everything you have in your life is a gift

from God. Grace is when God gives me what I

don't deserve. What's mercy. It's the exact opposite. Mercy is

when God doesn't give me what I do deserve, when

God doesn't give me what I do deserve, all the stuff,

all the ways I've been mean, I've been wrong, I've sinned,

I've failed, I've flubbed up. I've made mistakes. I've been

self centered. I deserve punishment for that. I deserve discipline

for that. I deserve retribution for that. If God gave

me everything I deserved, I wouldn't be standing before you

right now. If God gave you everything you deserve, you

wouldn't take your next breath so grace and mercy or

goodness and mercy goodness, God gives me what I don't deserve, mercy,

God doesn't give me what I do deserve. And he

says both of these are going to follow me. Because

God is a good God, I can inspect both his

provision and his pardon. His provision, he gives me all

kinds of good things in life. His pardon, He forgives

all kinds of bad things in my life forgiveness. That's

the mercy, the mercy part. And because God is good,

I can expect the most. Now, why do you need mercy?

Why do I need mercy? Because we're all imperfect, we

all make mistakes, we all sin, we're all in a

broken world. We don't always do the right thing. And

we even know that when we don't always do the

right thing. So I need forgiveness all the time. You

need forgiveness all the time. You need God's mercy all

the time. Aren't you glad that it says God's goodness

and God's mercy will follow me all my life. He

doesn't say God's justice will follow me all my life.

Because if you got what you deserved, you wouldn't be

sitting where you are right now, He wouldn't take another breath.

God doesn't follow you with his justice, He follows you

with his mercy. He is a good God. Psalm one O.

Three lists a number of ways that God shows his mercy.

And as I read this, I want you to circle

the verbs. And there's I don't know ten or so

things in this passage that are examples are definitions of

God's mercy to you. Here's what it says, Psalm one

O three, verse two to eleven. I will not forget

the glorious things that God does for me. He forgives.

He might circle that he forgives all my sins. He

heals me, that's mercy. He ransoms me from hell, that's mercy.

He surrounds me with loving kindness. That's mercy. He fills

my life with good things. He is merciful, tender towards

those who don't deserve it. That's mercy. He's slow to

get angry. I'm glad for that. That's mercy. He never

bears a grudge. Aren't you glad for that one? Some

of you don't believe that. You think that something you

did a long time ago. God's still trying to get

even with you for it. Anything bad happens to your life,

God's getting even with me. God, it says, does not

carry a grudge. He's not getting wet. How many times

have you heard me say God is not mad at you,

He's mad about you. No man will ever love you

like Jesus Christ. No woman will ever love you like

Jesus Christ. Any human love is minuscule in comparison to

the creator who created you. And He made you simply

to love you. And so he follows your life with goodness,

giving you the things you don't deserve, and mercy don't

not given you the things that you do deserve. And

He's following you these two things. He never bears a grudge.

He is not punished, just as we deserve for our sins.

For his mercy, there's the word, is as great as

the height of the heavens. He's like a father to us,

tender and sympathetic to those who reverence him. Now, because

God's mercy is following you every day of your life,

it means you can come to God with any problem,

any screw up, any mess up, any fault, any failure,

any sin, and God has a twenty four hour dropping service,

because his mercy is constantly following. There's never a moment

he's not showing mercy to you, and so you can

always come to him no matter what you're going through.

That takes away your fear. The Bible says this Hebrews eleven,

excuse me four sixteen. We can come before God's throne.

This is talking about in prayer where we can receive

mercy and grace, mercy and goodness to help us when

we need it, when we need it. You know, sometimes

you have sins in your life that are habitual, and

we've all got these. I've got him, You've got them.

It's areas that you continually stumble over and over. If

you have a problem with anger, you tend to lose

your temper over and over, or you tend to clam

up and swallow it over and over and over. Or

you may have a problem with lust, or you may

have a problem with jealousy, or you may have a

problem with your mouth. You can't keep your mouth shut,

and you gossip all the time, and you criticize all

the time, and you say mean things, and you go,

why did I say that? If you have an area

of habitual sin, Sometimes you start feeling a little guilty

that you keep coming back to God for the same sins,

like oh, I'm going to bring this one to him,

And you think you're going to come to God and say, God,

I did this again. God's going to go, oh, come on,

can't you come up with a new sin? You're gonna

give me the same old one. I've already forgiven that

one five thousand times. Come on, I'm so bored with

that sin. Give me something really to work on to

chew on here. And sometimes you're embarrassed to go, you know, God,

five minutes ago, I just confessed this, and guess what,

I just did it again, And you think God is

getting tired. God never gets tired of forgiving you, never, never, never,

So don't hold back because His mercy follows you every

day of your life. It is God's nature to be merciful.

He loves to show his mercy. He doesn't get tired

of it, he doesn't get bored with it. He doesn't

get frustrated that you keep coming back. God loves showing mercy,

so you don't have to come embarrassed. Let me read

that verse again. Look there on your outline, we can

come before God's thrown where we can receive mercy and

grace to help us when we need it. Now, this

phrase mercy will follow me all the days of my life.

It says goodness and mercy to me all the days

in my life. I think of two pictures that kind

of are metaphors. The first this is the Lord is

my shepherd. I told you in a previous message that

you drive cattle, but you lead sheep. When cattle are

driven on a cattle drive, the cowboys drive the cattle

from behind. They push them forward, and the horses are

behind and they're pushing them forward. But with sheep, you

lead sheep. The shepherd is out in front of the

sheep and he's walking with this roden staff, and they're

following the shepherd. But at the back of the flock

are a couple of little sheep dogs. And those little

sheep dogs are nipping at the heels of the sheep

making sure they don't run off into the ravine. And

these two sheep dogs keep you on track following the shepherd.

The sheep dogs in your life are God's goodness and

God's mercy. Let me introduce you to your sheep dogs.

You're at once called mercy, one dog is called mercy,

and one dog is called goodness. And God's goodness and

God's mercy are following you as you follow Jesus, the shepherd.

That makes sense. So these are the God's Goodness in

God's Mercy the sheep dog keep you moving in the

right direction.

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