Rick Warren - Why Money, Success, and Pleasure Arent Enough (Part 1)

Recently, I got this letter and it said, dear Reverend Warren.

Anybody who says Reverend Warren doesn't know me obviously, So,

Dear Reverend Warren, I heard your program on the radio,

so I thought you might be able to help me

with my dilemma. I'm sure you're familiar with the U

two song. I still haven't found what I'm looking for.

That line could be the theme of my life. It's

a strange feeling, since I have, by all standards, achieved

everything that most people work their entire lives to get.

My success as an investment banker has given me multiple homes,

nice cars, all kinds of perks and luxuries. I'm married

to a great woman, and I have two young kids

that I adore, and I enjoy good health. And all

of this came to me at a much earlier age

than I figured it would take. And yet, and yet,

I'm just not as happy as I think I ought

to be. To be honest, I'm often restless. I'm often

bored and unsatisfied. Sometimes at night I feel hollow and empty.

I keep thinking there's got to be more to life

than this. What do you think I should do?

Do you know? Friends?

There is an entire book of the Bible about this dilemma.

It's called the Book of Ecclesiastes, and it was written

by another guy who had everything. He had it all.

His name was King Solomon. Solomon was the king of

Israel at its apex of power. There was no man wiser, wealthier,

or more powerful in the world during the reign Solomon.

And yet Solomon has really in one sense of midlife

crisis in the Book of Ecclesiastes. And it's kind of

a negative book that you get to the end where

he comes to the right conclusion. But Solomon says, my

life just seems so empty, so meaningless, so painfully unsatisfying,

and so he said, I decided that I would try

to find meaning and purpose and fulfillment in life. And

Ecclesiastes is the book or the journey of his journal

of his journey trying to find satisfaction fulfillment in life.

And Solomon starts off in chapter one. He says, you know,

first they decided I'd try education, and I thought, I'm

just gonna get wise and I'm gonna learn everything there

is to know. So I learned everything I could learn,

and I discovered everything I could discover, and I became

as wise as I could be, became the wisest man

in the world. And he said, I read all the books.

In one part, he says, in the making of books,

there is much weariness. Yes, And at the end of

all of his education, he says, you know, I got

it all.

I knew what I needed to know, and I still

felt empty inside.

So he said, you know, then I decided I would

look for it in my career. And he said, I'm

the king of Israel, and I have enormous power. So

I am you know, embrace all kinds of big public works,

and I do all kinds of good things, and I

have great goals, and I have a big vision, and

I go after all the things in my work and

my career and my vocation. And I really gave myself

to it. But he said, I still felt empty. So

he said, well, maybe, you know, maybe the answer is

in money. And so he said, I amassed a huge fortune.

And of course Solomon became the wealthiest man in the

world in his day. And when the Queen of Sheba

actually came to see Solomon, she says, I've never seen

this kind of wealth it's just massive.

It's just unbelievable.

How much money, how much wealth, how many riches this

guy has. And he said, and I piled it all up,

and I bought nice things, and I did art projects

and all of these things.

But I still felt empty. I said.

You know, I tried everything that everybody tries, popularity, you know, fame,

I tried the party scene. I went out and I

gave my life to wine women in song, emphasis wine

and women. And he goes, at the end of that,

I still felt empty. It's a common common cause of

many many people. Now, let me just ask you. Have

you ever been so hungry? Let's say you get up

in the middle of the night. You've all done this.

Likely you go to the refrigerator and you opened the

door of the refrigerator and then you stare because you

know you're you're hungry, but you don't know what you're

hungry for. Okay, how many of you have ever been there?

Can I see your hands?

All right?

The rest of you are dirty, rotten liars. Okay, we've

all done this. You just stand in front of a

refrigerator and you go, I'm hungry, but nothing looks good.

You can't decide, what is this hunger inside of me?

You ever been so hungry all you can think about

was food?

Yeah?

Have you ever been so thirsty driving across the desert

you just think I've got to get something to drink

from my parched throat.

Yes, you have.

In this famous sermon of Jesus, he says, you know,

being spiritually hungry is actually a good thing. He said,

it's a good thing to be hungry, for God is

a good is a good thing. In fact, he says

it's one of the keys to living a blessed life. Matthew,

Chapter five, verse six, Jesus says, this God blesses those

who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

That's promise.

I want you to circle the word righteousness, and I

want you to circle the word filled, because we're gonna

spend some time on that today. First this word pill.

They will be filled. A lot of translations translated this verse.

They will be fully satisfied, they will be satiated, they

will have all of their needs fulfilled. They will be

fully satisfied with what happens in their life. And the Bible

says that you get that kind of fulfilled life you

get that kind of satisfying life, that meaningful life by

hungering and thirsting for righteousness. So obviously we need to

know what righteousness is. Now, Righteousness is incredibly important word

in the Bible. It's used hundreds and hundreds and hundreds

of times. The one day God is going to judge

the earth in righteousness, and so this is an important concept.

So what in the world does it mean to hunger

and thirst for righteousness? Because if I do that, then

I'm going to have a fulfilled and satisfying life. Well,

if you were to go to a theological dictionary look

up the word righteous, you'd find a long definition. In fact,

one dictionary I had had a twenty seven page definition

other word righteous. But let me just boil it all

down into statements.

It's it is.

About a relationship, and it is about a lifestyle.

First, it is a relationship. Write this down.

To be righteous means being right with God. In its

simplest form, it just simply means being right, being right

with God.

That's righteousness.

It is a position that God has in relationship to you.

You have in a relationship to God. Romans, Chapter one,

verse seventeen says this the good news tells us how

God makes us right with himself. Now, that word good news,

you know you've heard the word gospel, You've heard gospel music,

gospel preaching. Sharing the gospel with the word gospel simply

the Old English word for good news.

It simply means good news.

And the Bible says the gospel or the good news

tells us how God makes us right with him. Now,

I want you to notice that this is something that

God does for you. You don't do it, you don't

make yourself righteous. God does it for you. And we're

gonna look at that good news in detail in just

a minute.

It's a relationship. It's being right with God.

But the Bible also uses the word righteous to refer

to a lifestyle.

And when you write this down, it means.

Living right, living right as God intends, living right in faith,

living right in God's commandments. And this is not a

position of righteous it is the practice of righteousness. First

John chapter two twenty nine says this, All who practice

righteousness are God's true children. All who practice righteousness are

God's true children. So what I want us to do

today is to look at two things. How does God

make me? Write with him. Me being an imperfect, flawed individual,

and God being perfect and holy, How does God make

me write with Him? And then I want us to

look at practically on a daily basis, how do I

keep a spiritual hunger for God? Because the Bible says

if I am hungry and thirsty for God, to be

right with God and to do right with God, then

I will be filled. I will be fulfilled in life. Today,

I want to invite you to join me in something

that's very close to my heart, fulfilling the great commission

of Jesus Christ. Sharing the good news is the most

important thing we do. When we work together. There's nothing

that God cannot do to us. When we're unified through

daily hope. The message of Jesus Christ is now reaching

nearly every country in the world. That's one hundred and

ninety seven nations. We're going to even places where it's

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We're sharing the certain hope of Jesus and it's changing

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Why should I care about being right with God? Especially

since none of my friends seem to care. The people

who you live next door to couldn't care less, most

likely about being right with God. There are millions of

people in America and hundreds or hundreds of millions or

billions of people who really don't care at all about

being right with God. They don't seem to be doing

so bad. So why in the world should I care?

Or why in the world should I hunger and thirst

for righteousness and nobody else seems to care about it. Well,

to put it simply, one it's the only way to

really live, and two it's the only way to get

to coven.

Let me show you some verses.

Proverbs chapter twelve, Verse twenty eight says this righteousness is

the road to life and the path to immortality. Proverbs

righteousness is the road to life and the path to immortality.

Now, when it.

Says it's the road to life, then it must mean

I'm not really living unless I'm connected with God.

Not you're not.

If you're not connected to God, you're just existing. You're

not really living. Righteousness is the path to real life,

to real living. Saint Augustine said it like this, this

thou hast made us for thyself, Oh God, and our

hearts are restless. We got spiritual add until we find

our rest in thee. This is the very thing Solomon

was talking about. Says, I'm looking for meaning in this,

and I'm looking for meaning in that I'm looking for

satisfaction and fulfillment in all these different areas, but nothing happens,

and I can only find it in being connected to

my creator. It's nonsense to try to live my life

disconnected from the one who made me. You're not going

to discover your plan, your purpose, or your meaning in

life unless you're connected to God. How many times have

you heard me say you were made by God and

you were made for God. And until you figure that out,

life is never going to make sense. Life is not

about the acquisition of things. It's not about the achievement

of goals. It's not about all these other things, because

that's only going to last sixty eighty at the most

one hundred years. It's about getting to know God, who

made you and who loves you. It is the road

to life. But the Bible says it's also righteousness is

the path to immortality. And what does this mean? What

does this mean? It means that God's not going to

force you to go to heaven. He said, what do

you mean? It's a choice? You see, God created you,

and he loves you deeply. He wants you to learn

to love him back. But love is not love unless

you have a choice. So God never forces anybody to

love him. You can spend your whole life thumbing your

nose to God. You can reject God, and God will say,

like Burger King, have it your way. God will not

force himself on you. God does not. You can rebel

your entire life. You could ignore God your entire life.

You can act like God doesn't exist your entire life,

and God will let you do that.

He gave you.

He made you in his image, which means you have

the free moral will to make a choice, and He

wants you to choose to love him, not be forced to.

And so if I want to say God, I want

to live my entire life disconnected from you, God will, like.

Burger King, say have it your way. But here's the problem.

One day I'm going to die and I'm going to

stand before God, and God will be able to then

say to me, wait a minute.

You chose during your.

Life to totally ignore me, to rebel against me, to

disobey me, to ignore me, to live your life separate

from me. And I said, have it your way. So

obviously you must not want to live with me forever

an eternity, So have it your way, and you would

be eternally separated from God. And if you're separated from God,

you can't blame God. He gave you the choice. Why

would somebody want to live there life life completely separated

in denial of God and his will in your life?

And then once you die, Oh, by the way, I

want to love you and live in your house forever.

God will say, have it your way. You get what

you asked for you, what you chose. It was your choice.

Now you saw that verse where God says that the

good News shows us how God makes people write with himself.

That's called the gospel. What is that today? I want

to give you Christian theology one oh one? Okay, this

is the A. B. C's of our faith. What does

it mean for God to make me write or righteous

with him? Well, it means three things. Here's the plan, right,

you might want to write these down. And the first

thing is not necessarily good news. In fact, it's not

even news. But it's this. I can't make myself righteous, Okay,

I can't make myself righteous. Over In the Book of Jeremiah,

Chapter thirteen, verse twenty three, Jeremiah says, can a leopard

change his spots, And the answer is obviously not. And

he said, neither can an imperfect person make himself perfect.

I stop being perfect about the fourth breath of my life,

and nobody bats a thousand. In fact, I've never met, actually,

anybody who claimed to be perfect, except some people who

weren't all in their capacities.

And so we all know this. We all know.

But if I am imperfect, then here's the question.

How do I go to heaven if I'm imperfect?

Let me let me explain that the Bible says that

there is a heaven, and the Bible says Heaven is

a perfect place. There's no sadness, there's no sorrow, there's

no sickness, there's no suffering, there's no sin in heaven.

Now here's the problem.

I'm imperfect and I have problems like anger and fear

and anxiety and jealousy and self centeredness. If God lets

imperfect people into heaven, then guess what, Heaven would be

no better than earth.

So we got a problem here, because if.

God lets us into heaven with all of our sin,

then there's gonna be jealousy in heaven.

There's gonna be rape and murder in heaven.

There's gonna be war, adultery, unfaithfulness, meanness, racial prejudice, injustice.

All the things we have on the broken planet would

be in heaven, and heaven would be no different than earth.

If God just let imperfect, sinful people bring all their

sins into heaven.

That ain't gonna work. That isn't gonna work.

The Bible says, I can't make myself righteous. Now God

comes up with a plan for this. But let me

show you what the Bible says. Ecclesiast the chapter seven,

verse twenty says this, there is not a righteous person

on earth who always does what is right and never

since that's you, me, it's the pope, it's everybody. There's

no righteous person who always does the right thing and

never sins. And in Romans chapter three, it says this,

no one can ever be made right in God's sight

by simply doing what his law commands, because the more

we know God's law, the clearer it becomes that we

can't keep it because the standard of perfection is it's

you know, I was. I was on a plane one

time and the guy figured out I was a pastor.

So we start talking about heaven, and as we were talking.

I just happened asking. I said, so why do you

why do you think on what basis do you think

God's going to let you into heaven? He said, well,

I keep the ten commandments. I said, name them. I said,

you can't even know. I'm much less. Keep them, okay,

And the fact is we've all broken them all.

The Bible says you shall have no other gods for you.

I've had lots of gods before God many times in

my life, and so have you. Bible says, don't make

any idols. All we've idolized all kinds of things. We

ida liize success, we idolize beauty, we idolize money. You've

had all kinds of idols in your life. The Bible says,

don't lie, don't steal. You've lied, you stolen. The Bible says,

don't covet what somebody else says.

You've done that. When it comes to the commandments, I'm

ten for ten the wrong way.

Because Jesus said, hey, you know, if you have lust

in your heart, that's like adult treat He says, if

you have anger in your heart, it's like murder. So

guess what, I'm a murder and adulter. If that's true,

I'm ten for ten blanked out on that one. So

I need another plan, okay, and so do you. I

remember one time I was talking to God on another

plane and we were talking pretty much the same thing,

and I said, so, on what basis do you think

God's gonna let you into his heaven? And he said,

because I'm better than other people. And I said, so

you think God grades on a curve, okay, and that

your good works are this high and your bad works

are this low, so He's gonna you know, ignore or

vice versa.

You see, we all.

Want to be good enough to get to heaven, but

bad enough to be fun. Really, I said, no, No,

God's standard is perfection because God is a sovereign, holy,

just righteous God, and God cannot stand the side of sin.

The Bible makes us very clear over and over and over.

So how in the world do I get into God's

presence being an imperfect, sinful person.

There's got to be a plan for this.

Let's trying to earn God's approval by my works and

trying to earn perfection.

That it's like this. Let's say let's say.

La is Earth, and you know, and Hawaii is heaven.

Some of you think Hawaii is heaven, and so we

decide we're all gonna try to get to heaven on

our own, and we're all gonna get there by swimming

to Hawaii. Okay, now some of you don't know this,

but before I became a pastor, for three years, I

was a Red Cross lifeguard. So I let's say I

swim out twelve miles, but then I wear out and

I sink. And let's say you're an Olympic you Greg

Luganus or somebody, and you you swim out twenty miles

or thirty miles, and then you sink, And then you

and I we have a friend that we lack a lot,

but he doesn't even know how to swim, and he

drowns in the surf. And some guy doesn't even get

into the edge of the water. Do some people get

further than others? Yes, but the path is too far.

Nobody makes it all the way. I have no doubt

you're better than me. You're probably a more moral person

than I am. You're probably a more ethical person than

I am. I don't have any doubt that there are

a lot of people better people than me, and the world.

The thing is, none of us attain perfection and none

of us can swim all the way to Hawaii. So

we got to have a plan. Now, that's the second

part of this point two in the gospel is that

God sent Jesus to pay for my sin. God sent

Jesus to pay for my sin in a sacrificial system.

God sent his son to pay for my sin. Let

me give you an example.

Let's say you have lived a life of crime your

entire life.

And let's say you get caught.

And you go to court, and the prosecuting attorney makes

the case and you're found guilty of a lifetime of crime,

and so you are given a lifetime sinentence.

And the judge he's sitting.

There in the courthouse with his robe on and his gabble,

and he bangs the gabble down as a judge and says,

you are guiltiest charged. I sentence you to a lifetime sentence.

And then, to the shock of everyone, the judge gets up,

takes off his robe, walks down and stands beside you,

puts his arm around you, said you're guilty of all

those things and you deserve to repunished for it. But

I love you. So here's the deal. I'm going to

pay the penalty for you. I'm going to go serve

the lifetime sentence for you. And you hear the shock

in the room and the air is being sucked out

as everybody gasped go. The judge has just become the savior.

Today.

I've got a quick note from a listener in Minneapolis.

His name is Bill and wrote to me, Rick, I

want to let you know that I prayed with you

this morning, accepting God into my life.

Wow, that's great.

Daily Hope has become the way that I start each

day listening to your podcast. So much has changed in

my life over the past year. I had a job loss,

I had a transition, I had a divorce, my dad

passed away cancer, and my faith all in the same year.

I'm so thankful for all that you do. Well, Bill,

I want to tell you I know you've been going

through some really tough times this past year, but there's

no greater news than hearing that you've accepted Jesus into

your life. And the fact that God used the Daily

Hope podcast to lead you to Him is such a blessing.

And I want you to know that as you.

Continue to study God's word every day, you're going to

find that your faith is growing and you'll see God

actively working in your life. And I really am as

excited to think about what the next year is going

to bring. Year two in your life will be very

different than the last year. And to the rest of you,

all of our Daily Hope listeners, I just want to

thank you because we're able to provide the Daily Hope

podcast the people like Bill because of your generous support.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you,

thank you for helping us share the good news all

around the world. We love you, and imagine what it's

going to be to get to heaven and see all

these people who came to know Christ because of your giving.

God bless you.

You can join us in bringing hope to others. Just

scan the QR code or go to dailyhopetv dot com.