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

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. Okay,

and now Rick with part three of a message called

how do I Know What's True?

Now?

Postmodernism says can we really know truth? I mean, there

may be some truth after but how can anybody really

know it? Is it possible to know truth? Is it knowable?

The answer is absolutely, I can give you on a

full guarantee with a resounding yes. Absolutely. Truth can be knowable.

You can know the truth. In fact, Jesus that you

know the truth and it'll set you free, and you

can know what's false. Truth can be discovered. How do

we discover it? Five ways?

Number one, we.

Know what's true through creation, simply by looking around at

the world. We know what's true through creation. We learn

a lot about God, a lot about truth just by

looking at nature. This is why science is so important.

It helps us understand how things work, It helps us

understand truth, It helps us understand God and his universe.

That's why we value science. Romans one twenty says this

from the Bible. Since the creation of the world, God's

invisible qualities, his eternal power, his divine nature have been

clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, in

other words, through creation. So men are without excuse, in

other words, forget the Bible. I learn a lot about

God just by taking a walk this afternoon. When I

go out and I start walking around in creation, I

can learn a lot about God. First thing I can

figure out real quickly is God likes variety.

Have you noticed that. Have you looked down your row lately?

There's not anybody like you in the world, all of.

The different variety. God doesn't want it all alike. God

gets bored with sameness. God loves diversity. God loves variety.

Told some of you before. When God created beatles, he

created over sixty thousand different varieties of beetles. Think about that,

sixty thousand different kinds of beetles in the world. Now,

you would have thought four or five hundred varieties would

be enough. No, God wanted sixty thousand different varieties of beatles, John, Paul, Ringo, George,

and who knows the names are the other ones, But

I'm sure he's got them all.

Named because God likes variety. God loves you. Know.

Another thing, I look, just in nature, I go out

looking around. I didn't figure out pretty quick this guy's powerful.

Ever seen a volcano, ever seen an earthquake, tidal wave,

wave tides, winds. I mean, it's very obvious. If God

made all this, he's pretty powerful. So I know God

is creative. I know God likes diversity. I know God

is powerful. Just by looking at nature.

I know God is organized organized.

In fact, the more we know about nature, the more

we realize how much he is.

That the whole earth is an.

Ecosystem, and it's all delicately balanced, and it can get

out of balance, and things that we didn't even know

related to each other we now know are highly organized,

and that there is an ecosystem balanced in situations that

we don't.

Even know all.

That plant was particularly needed by this particular animal, and

that animal was needed for this particular animal, and on

and on and on and on, and you get it

out of balance.

It's highly organized.

And when I look at, for instance, things like the

angle of the Earth's axis as it is tilted, that

it's just the right angle to support human life or

life on this planet, and that if the axis was

too much this way, we would burn up, or if

it were too much that way, we'd freeze up. And

of course we all know that's an accident. Yeah, all right.

And so the more we understand the planet and God's universe,

the more we have to thank God for. Like I

said earlier, I said, you know, we didn't know about genomes,

we didn't know about DNA, we didn't know about all

these things. But the more we understand, the more we go,

WHOA what a God? How intricately he designed even our

own bodies?

You know.

You know, I've pretty much become aware of this since

I became a grandparent. You know, the grandkids are much

cooler than my kids. You know, I'm just I don't know,

you know, I think kids are wasted on us because

we have when we're young, we don't realize how cool

they are. And just about the time you get to

appreciate them and understand them.

They leave.

But I'm looking at these little fingernails of the babies

and looking how this came out of a woman's womb

and it came out and it works, and you know,

I just I don't you know, It's an amazing thing.

When you look biologists and physicists and things, you look

at the way God wired the world.

In creation, we learn.

About God, We learn a lot about value and about truth.

There is no contradiction between the gooveries of science and faith,

none at all. There are contradictions between unproven scientific.

Theories and faith, but there is.

No contradiction between discoveries and faith because all truth is

God's truth. God thought it up before the scientist did.

God designed the laws of physics before anybody professor physics

even knew about it.

For instance, watch this, I just learned this. Watch this

watch was that cool.

Watch I'll do it again, Wutch. You know what it happens.

Every time.

When I let it go, it doesn't go up. It

always goes down.

Now that is true, And no matter how much you

don't want it to be true, the law of gravity

is always going that way. Now, we didn't know that

for a long time. I mean like thousands of years ago,

Indians were going, you know, and I go, but they

didn't know why. We now know the law of gravity.

We understand it and we're discovering truth.

But it's always true.

And you could do this one gazillion times, that it's

always going to fall down.

Some things are always true.

Now the Bible says this on the back of your

outlying Romans one nineteen. The basic reality of God is

plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is. I mean,

it's just all around you. And that's why throughout history

up until about the last hundred years, almost all of

the great scientists were also believers. In fact, many were theologians.

Why because it was their love of God that drove

them to discover why do we do what we do.

I'm reading a book right now called.

God Seen through the Eye of the Greatest Minds. It's

a fascinating book on what scientists have said about God

throughout history and what they've learned about history. I was

invited to speak at TED, the TED conference up in

Carmel or Monterey. That's Technology, Entertainment and Design Summit, and

it's all these scientists and technology people and very very

smart people. And they put me in an afternoon session

between probably the two most prominent atheists in America. Now

that's what's called an ambush. So I ambushed them, okay,

And I mean, I'm going, you're gonna give me a

setup this great, Thank you.

God, there is a god in the universe. Thank you.

And you know, I won't let anybody be an enemy.

I just love them into the kingdom. And by the

time we were over, well the three of us going

maybe we ought to write a book together. And one

of the things that I said is, you know what,

I just don't have enough.

Faith to be an atheist.

It takes far more faith to be an atheist than

it does to believe that there's a creator. I mean,

when I look at these instruments over here, and I

look at these things, I going, somebody had to make that.

I don't think that just showed up. I don't somebody

had to design all those keys. That's I mean, I

could stand here for one hundred million years and I

don't think it would just form on its own. Somebody

had to design that. When I look at this watch,

I'm going, okay, there had to be some kind of

designer behind us. It takes far more belief for me

to think, oh, that's an accident and one day or

over one hundred million years, that just became a watch. Well,

you know that sounds silly. But to say that the

whole world happened that way without any intentional design, I'm sorry.

I don't have enough faith to believe that.

It takes far more faith to say this all just

is a random chance. These lights right here, they just

showed up there. Okay, they just showed up because over

a long period of time, lights show up.

Okay.

You know, I've got a number of friends who are atheists,

and I say, okay.

Let me ask you this question. Just follow me on this.

What percentage of the knowledge of the universe do you

think you have? Ten percent? Of course, not one percent,

of course, not one billion zillionth of a percent of

the worlds or the universe's knowledge you might possess.

Yeah, maybe one billion zillionth Okay.

So what that's saying is you and I we don't

know ninety nine point nine.

Percent of the knowledge that's out there right right.

Are you telling me there's no possibility that a god

might exist?

In the ninety nine point No, no, that you don't

know about.

You are just automatically wiping him off as an impossibility. Yes,

that's not called being open minded. That's called arrogance. And

let's just get down to the real issue here. It's

not what you don't believe, it's why you don't believe it.

The truth is you don't want to believe in God

because you'd have to change your ways if there was. Now,

let's just admit it. It's not that you can't believe in God.

It's that you won't believe in God because if there was,

you'd have to change some things you do. And you

want to be your own God.

Let's just admit it. It's a pride issue. I want

to run my own life.

Otherwise, how could I deny the possibility of something in

the ninety nine point.

Whatever that I don't even know about.

That is what I would call an extremely closed mind.

We know what's true through creation number two, we know

what's true through conscience.

Through conscience, there's.

Some things that are hardwired in us by God that

we know are always right and always wrong, no matter

what anybody else says. Our conscience tells us this The

Bible says this in Romans too. Some people naturally obey

God's commands even though they don't have the law. In

other words, there are people all around the world do

the right thing. They don't have a Bible. Some people

naturally obey God's commands even though they don't have the law.

This proves that the conscience is like a law written

in the human heart, and it will show whether we

are forgiven or condemned. Let me say we take a

random sample of one billion people from around the planet,

or just a million, and we put them out on

a corner in New York City in Times Square, and

we're going to ask him a moral question, and say,

here's a.

Little old lady.

She's ninety two, she's blind, and she's walking with a walker,

and she needs to cross a busy intersection in New

York City. Now tell me which of these three options

is morally right.

Okay. Number one, you can ignore her and just let

her go off and her on.

Number two, you can help the blind lady across the street.

Number three, you can push her into oncoming traffic.

Why are you laughing?

Because we instinctively know there's a right thing to do.

You don't have to be a quote Christian or Jew,

or a Muslim or even a spiritual person. Inside you

know that's the right thing to do. That's the way

God wired our conscience. The Bible says this. I love

this in the message paraphrase. Look up here on the screen.

This shows that God's law is not something alien imposed

on us from without, but it's woven into the very

fabric of our creation. There's something deep within us that

echoes God's yes and no, right and wrong. Look at

the next verse on your outline. The Bible says this,

the Lord gave us mind and conscience. We cannot hide

from ourselves. This week, I was watching and there was

a criminal who'd been on the lamb and they caught

him as a fugitive. And when he was caught, he

actually looked relieved. And then he said, I'm really glad

I got caught. He said, the guilt was killing me.

The guilt was killing me. Where'd that comfort?

It comes from inside inside?

Now, the problem with conscience is this, one of all

of the sources of finding truth is the least reliable.

Because the Bible teaches us that our conscience can be weakened.

It can be warped. It can be hardened. Our conscience

can be perverted. In fact, it can be killed. I

would say somebody like Hitler had a dead conscience.

It was dead.

And so the more I violate my conscience, the more

out of whack it gets. As I said, it just

gets easier and easier to do the wrong thing. So

just because my conscience lets me get away with it,

doesn't mean it's right. But there are The point I'm

making is there are some things that are hardwired in

us around the world.

It says, we know what is right and what's wrong.

Number three, we know what's true through consideration. Through consideration,

and say, what do you mean by that? We can

we know it's noble, it's intellectual, that you can observe it.

Truth is noble. You don't just get truth by faith.

You can test it. You can experiment with it. You

can you can prove it. Truth is intelligent, it it

has it's it's rational, there's an you can observe it.

And just like I did with the you know, dropping

the pen, you can you can test it. Truth is testable,

it is verifiable. You can examine the evidence. If I

get a map, I tell you say I'm going to

go to San Francisco.

Give me a map.

So you give me a map, and that map I

follow it and it takes me to San Francisco.

And then next week I gotta go to.

San Francisco again, and I use the map again and

it takes me there. And I use this over and

over and over. Eventually I figure out this map is true.

It's reliable that when I look at this map and

it takes me to San franch this school, like it says,

and it doesn't take me to Alabama, then this is

a true map. For forty plus years I've been following

this map called the Bible. I have found it to

be true. It always takes me where it says it's

gonna take me. I don't always feel comfortable there, I

don't always like it there, but it always takes me

to where it says it's gonna take me.

It has never never taken me to some.

Place I didn't expect because it said something different. And

so we can through consideration, we can think it. You see,

God gave you a brain and he expects you to

use it. Why would people a lot of times say, well,

I want God to just write it in the sky.

You know, why would God do that? He gave your brain,

that is his will. And so he says, use your intelligence.

Use your intellect, and that's how you figure out God's

not gonna write it in the sky. You're in a buffet,

he says, you know, take broccoli, not Brussels sprouts.

Happen that way. He says, use your mind, use the brain.

But most people never slow down long enough for consideration.

Most people just drift through life. They never even think

about where am I headed, where am I going? What

am I doing? Have you ever done that? The Bible

tells us over and over, ponder the path of your feet.

In other words, think through your life nowhere it's headed.

Don't just kind of go out and drift through life.

Spend some time in consideration, in observation, going Am I

on a true path? And check it out? When in doubt,

check it out. Schedule time to do that. The Bible

says in Proverbs fourteen, fools will believe anything, but the

wise think about what they do. Think about that means consideration,

and think about what they do. The next verse says this,

anyone who examines this evidence will come to stake his

life on this that God himself is the truth. It's

okay to check things out. It's okay to be skeptical.

There's nothing wrong without at all. In fact, that's kind

of smart in my opinion. The dumb thing is to

sit on the fence and do nothing about it. Tonot

check it out. If you're not checking it out, that's

the dumb thing to have something so important like does

God exist or not?

Is Jesus who he said he was or not?

And then to go all through life and come to

the end of your life and go, well, I never really.

Took the time to check it out. That's the dumb thing. See.

I always tell people take the time to make the

right decision.

You know. Here at Saddleback, I don't believe in.

Fear of vangelism, in other words, trying to scare people

out of hell or scare the hell out of them, okay,

or scare.

Him into heaven.

Why because it only lasts about as long as the

fear does. And I tell you need to accept Jesus

Christ not because you're going.

To die tonight.

You might, but you probably won't. You need to accept

Jesus not because you're going to die tonight, but because

you go live tomorrow and you need to know His

plan and purpose and not waste another single day.

And so check it out and examine the evidence.

After having talked to literally tens of thousands of people,

I've found that when people take the time to check

it out, they inevitably come down on the side of

the evidence, and it is incontrovertible. I'm not talking about

what people think Christianity is. I'm talking about what it

really is.

What a great message from Pastor Rick today. There's something

I always take away from his message. Now here's Rick

with today's offer.

You know, I've been a pastor for over three decades,

and I've been teaching the Word of God for over

four decades, And in all of that time, the number

one question I've been asked by people is this, how

can I change or why can't I change? I've talked

to literally thousands and thousands of peace people who want

to change but are just stuck and they can't figure

out how to get unstuck. You know, the truth is,

you can't change on your own because will power alone

isn't enough to make permanent changes. Sure, you can force

yourself to change, for a month or two months, but

pretty soon you're going to go back to your old ways.

Pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps is not enough.

Talking yourself into a change by positive thinking is not enough.

The Bible says, true transformational change only comes through the

power of God inside you. So let me ask your

personal question, how do you want to be different at

the end of this year? What changes would you like

to make in your life? What goals would you like

to see accomplished in your life? Well, it isn't going

to happen on your own. You're going to need God's power,

and I want you to understand how to plug into

God's power. That's why I'm sending out God's Power to

Change Your Life, a book that I've written. When you

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