Rick Warren - How Do I Know What’s True — Part Four

You know, we really live in a world that's full

of competing beliefs and values and choices, and what you

believe shapes how you live and ultimately who you become.

But the good news is God hasn't left us to

figure it all out alone.

No.

In fact, today on Pastor Rick's Daily Hope, we're going

to continue our series Reframing Your Worldview, where Rick Warren

unpacks powerful truths from God's Word to help you see

life clearly and live it with confidence and purpose. So

let's get right to it with Rick and his final

part of a message called how do I Know What's true?

Now?

How do you know when a teacher is teaching the truth?

For that matter, how do you know if I'm teaching

the truth? Well, if you're teaching the Bible? First, does

it square with the Bible? But there's a couple of

other things that you need to look at. You might

write these down. How do you know if a teacher's

teaching the truth? Number one? Examine their lifestyle. Examine their lifestyle,

figure out does what they say match what they're doing.

In other words, if you guys hear a guy on

TV preaching about giving money to the poor, and he's

driving around in a Bentley. What's that say to you?

He's not living what he's teaching. Okay, so you check out.

Are they hypocritical? Do they walk the talk? Is their

life match what they say they believe? And if it doesn't,

you don't need to pay any attention to them. In fact,

I would say to you, never study a philosopher without

knowing their biography. In fact, those of your parents. You

teach your kids this, Never study a philosophy or a

thinker without knowing their biography and knowing what did it

do in their life. Because some of these guys who

wrote the supposed great books, their lives were a basket case.

It didn't even work in their own life, much less

than anybody else's. If you go and you study some

of the great philosophers, some of them, many of them

either committed suicide or went insane. Well, I don't want

a philosophy that that's the end result. For instance, Nietzschee,

who was the first guy said God is dead. Nietzschee

went insane. Sigmund Freud committed suicide. Well, I'm not gonna

He hated his father and all of his life, resented

and rejected it. In fact, if you ever want to

read a good book, I can't remember the name of it.

In nineteen ninety nine, the great imminent professor of psychology,

Paul Vitz, wrote a book called I Think It's Faith

of the Fatherless, and he studied the one hundred most

famous atheist in history. See is there anything in common?

And do you know what the one hundred famous atheist

and history had in common? They all hated their fathers.

They were either abandoned by their father, ridiculed by their father,

rejected by their father, their father died at an early age,

or they hated their father. Well, that makes sense because

if we're to pray our father who art in heaven,

if God's like my father, no, thanks God. You got

to study the psychology of atheism and know why people

do what they do. Never accept the belief without looking

at the lifestyle behind it, because if it doesn't work

in their life, you don't need to spend any time

on it. Now, notice what Jesus said here two three

verses up here on the screen. Matthew seven. Beware of

false teachers. You can detect them by the way they

what act, just as you can identify a tree by

its fruit. In other words, don't look at what they say,

look at what they do. Talk as cheap. What do

they do? In fact, Matthew nine sixteen and the message

says this, don't be impressed with charisma. Look for character.

Who preachers are is the main thing, not what they say.

Charisma is highly overrated, folks. Yes, charisma has nothing to

do with leadership except it is an impediment to it.

The three most charismatic leaders of the twentieth century were

also the worst Mao, Stalin and Hitler. Extremely charismatic men,

but very evil men and caused the result of millions

and millions of deaths. Charisma is highly overrated. Look for character,

not charisma. In fact, Matthew seven twenty says this the

best way to identify a tree or a person is

the guy, the kind of fruit produced, look at their lifestyle.

And the reason I'm pushing this is because I care

about it very deeply. First, I'm a teacher, I'm a leader,

and second, I've had friends who died unnecessarily because they

followed fake leaders. I grew up in the Bay Area

and then later on up in northern California in the Redwoods,

in a little town called Redwood Valley, and there was

a very charismatic man who moved into our little town

and quote started a church. It was a cult. My

next door neighbors got involved in that cult, and he

was very, very charismatic, and they did whatever he told

him to do, and eventually he led them all to

move down to Guiana. And one day he led them

all to drink poisoned kool aid and about six seven

hundred of them died in the jungle. His name was

Jim Jones. I had friends who died in Guiana. So

I'm telling you just because somebody says they're from God

doesn't mean they're from God. You should check them out.

You should consider them. The other thing you do is

listen for God's spirit when you're listening to a teacher.

The Bible says in John fourteen, the Father will give

you another helper. He's talking about his spirit, the Holy Spirit.

The Father will give you another helper who will stay

with you forever. He is the spirit who reveals the

truth about God. So you say, when you're listening to me, God,

is this guy talking the truth? Is you really telling

the truth? And you listen and you listen for the

spirit's confirmation. It's one of the other ways. If Tom's

gonna come and talk about the fourth way we know truth.

A fourth way that you can know truth is through

God's commandments, through what God tells us in the direction

he gives us in the Bible. Look at what two

Timothy three sixteen says. All scripture is inspired by God

and is useful to teach us what's true and make

us realize what's wrong in our lives.

It straightens us out. It teaches us to do what's right. Now.

If I discover truth from the Bible, then how do

I know the Bible's true? If you've ever asked that question,

I honor you for asking that question. You should How

do I know that this book is true? I know

it's true because of the difference it's made in my life.

I know it's true because Jesus said it's true. But

some of you might be asking, is there any like

objective truth, objective evidence that shows me that the Bible

is true?

The answer is yes, there is.

There's just a world of objective evidence that says that

this book is true. There is both external evidence and

internal evidence. The external evidence that it's a historical book.

You can rely on the internal evidence that there is

the truth in this book. External evidence is things like

the number of copies of the Bible from around the

time when it was written. That's what historians look for

to see if a book is accurate, it's true. For instance,

a book like Homer's Iliad Love you had to read

that in school, there's about six hundred and.

Forty three copies of that.

They all historians look back, they see all the copies,

they compare them, and they go, Okay, that's what that

book said. Or a book like Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars.

There's only ten copies of that. The earliest one of

those is a thousand years from when it was supposedly written.

But a historians still saying, that's probably what the book said.

How about the Bible? How many copies of the Bible?

There are three hundred and sixty six copies of the

Bible from when it was written and then on earliest

from just seventy years afterwards. And let me tell you

why that's important. It dispels what I would call an

urban legend about the Bible. This urban legend is out

there that somehow the Bible was passed down from generation

to generation, and so it got changed as it was

passed down, translated from this language to that language to

this language. That's just not true. That's like alligators and

the sewers of New York.

It's just not true. The truth of the matter is

when translators translate the.

Bible, they go back to these five thousand copies from

right around the time when it was written.

Compare them, see how they all match.

So we know it is what it is, and it

says what it says. That's external evidence. External evidence is

also stuff like archaeology. The cities are there, the places

are there, you can go back and find them. In fact,

it's sort of humorous. There's been many times in history

when historians have said, well, the Bible's probably wrong, that's

not really accurate, and then the Bible has proved itself

to be true and the historians wrong. There was a

long period of time when historians said there was no

such thing as a tribe called the hit Tits like

the Bible talks about in the Old Testament.

Just no such thing, just somebody made it up.

Until about one hundred years ago, a guy by the

name of Hugo Winkler discovered at a place called Boziskoy.

Ten thousand clay tablets.

At the Hittite capital, and now everybody accepts it as

a part of history.

Historians used to.

Say that when the Bible talks about Solomon having all

these horses, that that was wrong. Nobody had horses back then.

But then they dug up a place called Megiddo and

guess what they found thousands of horse stables. That's meant

that he had horses. Again and again, the Bible has

proved itself to be true. There is the external evidence

in history. There's also the internal evidence of the Bible itself.

Internal evidence is the fact that something can be trusted.

One of the internal evidences that people look for is

eyewitness accounts. If something secondhand or third hand, I can't

trust maybe what somebody said, but if it's an eyewitness account,

I can trust it. In a court of law, if

a prosecutor has two or three eyewitness accounts of something,

he's got a pretty good chance of making his case. Well,

the Bible is filled with eyewitnesses. Counts, Moses was there

when the Red Seas split, Joshua was there, and watched

the walls of Jericho fall. The disciples of Jesus stood

in that upper room, and all of a sudden saw

the resurrected Jesus.

It's filled with eyewitness accounts.

The internal evidence of the Bible is also in the

fact of how this book tells one story with consistency.

Now think of this with me.

This book, the Bible was written over a fifteen hundred

year time span. It was written on three different continents

by forty different authors, kings and shepherds and fishermen and

tax collectors, people from every walk of life.

And yet it speaks.

With consistency on the most controversial subjects of the day.

And yet it tells one story from beginning to end.

God's salvation and love for man, and how he came

into this world through Jesus Christ.

No human being could have come up with that.

It's an amazing example of the power of God to

write that story for our lives.

The fifth and highest way that we know the truth

is through Christ. To creation, conscience, consideration, commandments, and Christ.

God came to earth and human form to personify truth.

The Bible says Jesus was full of grace and truth.

He incarnated truth. He personalized truth. Truth is not a principle.

Truth is a person. Truth is relational. Truth is someone

you can relate to. Truth is Jesus Christ. Now.

One of the.

Clearest and the most well known verses of the Bible

is the next verse in your outline. Jesus said, I

am the Way, the Truth, and the life. No one

comes to the Father but by me. Now know this.

He says, I not a religion, not a race, not

a ritual, not rules and regulations. He says, I it's

a person. Truth is a person. I am not. I

might be not. I hope to be not. I wish

it could be that I'd like to be. I am

the Way, the Truth, and the life. And he says,

I am the truth, not one truth, not part of

the truth. He didn't say I'm a little bit of

the truth. He said I am the truth. This, by

the way, is what separates Jesus Christ from every other

person on the planet, every other leader, every other faith.

Mohammad said, I am a prophet of the truth. He said,

I teach the truth. Buddhist said I am searching for

the truth. He made a very famous statement at the

end of his life, very famous where he said, at

the end of his life, I am still searching for

the truth. The Vedis, which is the Hindu scripture, says

truth is very elusive. You kind of got to look

forward it, so you don't really know where that's here

or there. And it's going to post modern actually, and

so you get all these different leaders say I'm looking

for the truth, I'm teaching the truth, I point to

the truth. I'm a prophet of the truth. And Jesus

comes out and says it, I'm it, I am the truth. Now,

that is an incredibly defsive statement because it's either right

or it's wrong. He's either who he says he is,

or he's the biggest liar in history. A lot of

people say, oh, well, I think Jesus was a great teacher.

Couldn't be couldn't be a great teacher. Impossible for Jesus

to be a great teacher, because no great teacher would

claim to be God if he wasn't, that's not good.

In other words, if I stood up here today and

I said my name is Rick Warren, I'm a good teacher,

you might say, yeah, I didn't buy that. My name's

Rick Warren and I'm a man of God. Okay, my

name's Rick Warren. I speak for God. Yeah, okay, fine,

I'm a prophet of God. Well I don't know about

that one. My name is Rick Warren. Oh and by

the way, I'm God. Now if I said that, would

that change anything in our relationship? Well duh, because all

of a sudden you got to make a decision. If

I stand up. My name's Rick Warren. I am the Way,

the Truth, and the Life. There's not a snowball's chance

in hell you're gonna get into Heaven except through me. Hello.

Now that means one of three things. I'm either a

kook like the guy who thinks he's Napoleon or a

fried egg Or, or I'm a con man and I'm

just gonna try to get your money or something. Or

I am who I say I am. Those are the options.

What is Jesus when he says I am the Way,

the Truth, and the Life. Nobody comes to the Father

God except through me. Okay, he's either conning two point

three billion people in the world right now who have

totally believed a lie, or he is he was nuts

he didn't know what he was talking about. Or he's

who he said he was.

It doesn't leave a lot.

Of wis there's a guy here today, I don't know

here in one of the venues. You've been coming to

saddle Back for I don't know, a long time. Your

husband or your wife, your girlfriend. Somebody's brought you here

and you've been sitting on the fence for a long time.

And you think you're in because you come to church.

But you're not in yet because you haven't put your

trust in Jesus yet. You're not across the line. It's

time for you to get off the fence. This is

your day. Be a man, make a decision. You know.

I told the people up at ted, I said, everybody's

betting their life on something. Okay, everybody's betting their life.

An atheist is betting that there is no God. You

better be right or he's going to have a big mistake.

I am betting my life. I willingly tell you this.

I'm betting my life that Jesus was who he said

he was. What do you betting your life on? Whatever

it is, you better have a good reason for it.

Have you examined the evidence? Have you check it out?

Have you seriously given it? Thoughty? You do well, I

don't have time to get into it. Well, that's the

big mistake. You need to step across the line and

say I'm in. Jesus said I Am the Way, and

the Bible says in John three p. Thirty three and

a new living translation, those who believe him discover that

God is true. Now quick, just write this down. I

won't even talk about it. What do I do with

the truth once I've discovered it? Four things, just right,

real quickly. Number one, believe it. Believe it. The Bible

tells us, continue to believe this truth and stand in

it firmly. Believe it. Number two, do it. Truth is

not just an intellectual exercise. It's something you do. You

practice it, you apply it, you live it, you obey it.

The Bible tells us, obey the truth that we've learned already,

before you start learning any the other new truth, why

do you start doing the ones you already know? Believe it?

Do it? Number three stand for it, Stand for it.

Don't be ashamed in a relevant or relational postmodern world

that says, oh, it doesn't really matter. Stand for truth.

The Bible tells us our responsibility is to never oppose

the truth. But to stand for it at all times.

We need to be people of the truth in a

relevativistic age. And then number four, spread it, Spread the truth.

The Bible says we must support believers who go on

trips like this so we can work together and spreading

the truth. Probably talking about the peace plan. Let's read

the last verse aloud together. Let everything you do reflect

your love of the truth and the fact that you

are in dead earnest about it. The friends, I'll be

honest with you. There's a lot in this book that

I don't understand, and there's a lot in this book

that is uncomfortable to me. But the fact is, it

is the truth, and it is a map that it

always takes me to where it tells me it's going

to go. Let's bow our heads. Would you pray this prayer? God,

I'm stepping across the line today, Jesus Christ. I want

to believe you are the way, the truth, the life.

I want to know the truth so the truth will

set me free. I want to believe it, I want

to do it. I want to stand for it, and

I want to spread the truth. I'm in I'm putting

my trust in you, in your name I pray Amen.

Hi everybody, this is Rick and I hope you enjoyed

today's broadcast. You know, if you just prayed that prayer

for the very first time, or you just committed your

life to Jesus again today, would you let me know

about it. There's something real about sharing your commitment. So

write me Rick at Pastorick dot com and say, Rick,

I prayed that prayer of commitment. I gave my life

to Christ. And I'll send you some material that will

help you on your journey with Jesus. And I'll also

pray for you. God bless you. Wow.

Some powerful words from Pastor Rick today. And now this

is really one of my favorite parts of the broadcast.

This is letters from our listeners. And now here's Rick.

One of the greatest joys of my day is reading

letters from our listeners. It truly is inspiring to see

how God is working in your lives, and it encourages

me just as much as I hope to encourage you.

So today I want to share a note from Heather,

who has been discovering the incredible benefits of studying God's

word every day. Heather wrote to me, she said, Hi,

Pastor Rick, a friend of mine recently sent me your podcast,

and I've been feeling lost and helpless and I didn't

I wasn't sure what to pray, or how to pray,

or when to pray. And it's like I hit a

wall and I haven't been sure how to get back

on track. Well, your message really spoke truth to me,

and it made me realize the missing pieces I had

in my life because I was not in God's Word daily.

I was basically living my life without God, and I

was trying to do everything on my own. Well, Pastor Rick,

it goes without saying that doing life without God has

been miserable failure. So thank you for stirring the Holy

Spirit in my heart with the words that I needed

to hear. I have now made the commitment to read

God's Word every day and to pray daily, and I

even started praying in the cars I go about my

day just like you, it's hard for me to close

my eyes and not fall asleep you were listening. Please

keep doing what you're doing and reaching people who really

need to hear about Jesus and God's love. Well, Heather,

I am so glad to hear that you're back in

God's word and that you're making it a part of

your daily life. There really isn't anything more important than

deepening your relationship with Him, and I love the fact

that you are praying every day, especially keeping your eyes

open while you're driving. Do you or somebody know or

even feel lost yourself like Heather once did? Well, the

best way to find hope and strength is by staying

connected to God every day. That's the purpose of Daily

Hope and that's why I started it, to help people

like Heather dive into God's Word and experience his encouragement

on a daily basis. Now, our Daily Hope devotionals and

our podcasts are completely free and they're delivered straight to

your inbox every morning. So if you're not getting these,

sign up today and start each day with biblical wisdom

and encouragement from God's Word. Just go to pastorik dot

com and sign up today.

Hey, be sure to join us next time when we

look into God's Word for our Daily hope. This program

is sponsored by Pastor Rick's Daily Hope and your generous

financial support