Rick Warren - How Did the World Get So Messed Up — Part Two

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. Let's

jump right in for part two of a message called

how did the World get so Messed Up?

Now?

This morning, I want to just quickly look at five

dimensions of the damage that when sin entered the world,

and when we continue to sin, we continue to blow it.

It affects five areas. There are natural implications. There are

physical implications, there are emotional implications, there are relational implications,

and there are spiritual implications every time we blow it. Okay,

so let's look at them. What are five results of

living in a fallen world? Number one, there are natural

disasters and deformities.

Natural disasters and.

Deformities nature doesn't always act in a rational way. It

often acts in an irrational way, and there are national

natural disasters. And when people ask why are their hurricanes

and why are their droughts? And why are there earthquakes?

And why are there tidal ways and all of these

other different natural disasters, the answer is very simple. The

planet is broken, it's fallen. This is not a perfect place.

And the Bible says that very clearly that there are

It's not perfect anymore. In fact, by tells us in

Romans eight twenty, creation was condemned to lose its purpose.

The original purpose of creation was to be in perfect

harmony with Man and perfect harmony with God. It is not,

and the elements are rough, and it can be very unkind.

And so today creation doesn't always work the right way.

The Bible says that it is.

Look at the next verse, creation is confused, you know,

when you look at things like how do animals get

sometimes deformed or defected? And why sometimes are babies born

with major defects and are major deformities, Well, it's because

of sin. Sin in my own personal life could be

I mean, in other words, if I'm a drug mom

and I take crack cocaine and then I have a

deformed baby.

That's the result of sin. Or if I've got AIDS

and then.

I pass it on that baby didn't do anything wrong,

but somebody did something wrong. Most likely they may, you know,

somebody gave them the wrong blood transfusion, or they had

sex with somebody who had AIDS or something. There was

some somewhere back something went wrong. And even when you

see things like Siamese twins that are born conjoined at

the head, where did that come from? It's because we

live on a broken planet. And the Bible says creation

is confused. It's not a perfect place, and all of

the environmental problems that we have in the world are

a result of sin. There was no pollution in the

garden of Eden, there was no raping of the landscape.

There was no you know, not taking care of the planet.

It was all because of sin.

The problems of physical problems on this planet are result

of evil.

In the world.

And the Bible tells us all of creation groans with

pain Romans eight twenty two. Why it groans with pain

because it knows it's not made for that way. It's

made to be in harmony. And actually nature is quite

harsh sometimes, so there are natural disasters and deformities. Second,

there is physical decay and death in the world because

we live in a fallen planet, physical decay and death.

The Bible says this in second Corindians four sixteen. Our

physical body is becoming older and weaker. Want to look

at you and I can prove that. Okay, you don't

have your youthful beauty, and our bodies are getting weaker

and they're getting older. There are no perfect bodies. You

can air brush them into perfection, but there are no

perfect bodies.

A lot of us have furniture, you know.

Our chest drops into our drawers and things do. Not

everything works right in your body.

Have you figured that out? It just why Because we're

in a fallen planet. Not everything works right.

If we're in a perfect planet, there would be no

need for doctors. But we live in a fallen world.

You know, I kind of hesitate telling you this. But

there's this guy who he went over here to the

claim jumper about a year ago, and his single guy

and he's sitting in a booth and a woman comes

in as a single woman, and she sits in the

booth right next to him, and she starts having a

sneezing attack and as she's sneezing.

I hate to tell you this, she's sneezing.

Real hard and her glass eye popped out and the

guy reaches over and he catches it before it hits

the ground. That's a way to start a conversation. So

he goes over and in that embarrassing moment, they start

talking to each other and they actually laugh about it,

and they actually end up going out on a date.

A year later, they're married.

They're married, and at the wedding, the pastor asked the

woman said, well, what was it about this guy that

really attracted you? And she said, well, you know, he

just kind of caught my eye.

Look at this verse up here on the screen.

Our earthly bodies, which die and decay, are different from

the bodies we're going to have in heaven, Thank God,

for they will never die. The bodies we have now

embarrass us. Anybody wants say amen on that. Okay, The

bodies we have now embarrass us for they become sick

and die, but they will be full of glory when

we come back to life again in heaven. So the

second problem is not only is the earth damage, but

we'd damage physically by sin by defects, and that's why

we have all these medical bills. We live in a

fallen planet. In physics, they call this the law of entropy.

And the law of entropy is that everything in the

universe is continuously, irreversibly decaying.

That's the law of entropy.

That all matter is degrading, and that all energy is dispersing.

They sinus have known this for years. It's dispersing into disorder.

In other words, this world is winding down, it's decaying, which,

by the way, totally contradicts the the you know, the

second law of thermo dynamics, and the law of entropy

totally discredits the law the theory of evolution, which says

things are getting better, things are getting more complex, and

they're getting improved. Well, it denies the second law thermodynamics. Now,

not only do we have decay, but we have death

in the world. And the Bible says this, everyone dies

because all of us are related to Adam, the first man. Now,

one of the reasons why we die is God doesn't

want us hanging around on an imperfect planet. To live

on a fallen planet for eternity, that would be hell.

And God says, I didn't make.

You to live in a place of imperfection forever. I

made you to live in a place of perfection forever.

So I want you to know me, choose to be

in my family so you can live in that place forever.

So one day God's going to shut down this earth

because he is prepared a place that's perfect in eternity.

The Bible says this, All creation anticipates the day when

it will join God children in glorious freedom from death

and decay.

Says, even the world.

Is looking for the Earth is looking. Nature's looking forward

to that day. So we've got natural disasters, and we

got physical decay and death. Number three, we have emotional

distress and disappointment.

Why do you get stressed out?

Why do you get disappointed because you live on a

fallen planet? You live in an imperfect world because evil

exists and sin exists, and stress is the result of

living in a damage, sinful world. And I don't know

if you've noticed this or not, but most things don't

live up to their hype. Most things are overrated and

they're told like they're the next thing since slice bread,

and that you know they're not all they're cracked up

to beat and you go to an event and you

go out, you go, is that all there is? Do

you remember that song is Peggy Lee or Brindley? Anybody

remember that song? Is that all they're? Those are all

the old folks in the church.

Okay, But you know it just doesn't it? Why? Because

it doesn't last? You know.

As a pastor, of course, I've worked with a lot

of young couples who spend a year working on their

wedding and it's like, where are we going to put

the candies? And what kind of bag are the candies

going to be in? And what color are the candies?

And they spend an entire year and then it's over

in a couple hours. I've always thought if they spent

that much time in preparing for the marriage instead of

preparing for the wedding, we'd have stronger marriages and fewer divorces.

I know, people say, oh, we don't have time for

premarital counseling because we're too busy planning the wedding. I'll

tell you, the wedding isn't going to last. The marriage

is what you want to last. If you spend as

much time on pre marriage counseling, you but you're married,

you do far more for your relationship than what color

are the candies. So in a fallen world, we get

disappointed by events. They're just not all they're cracked up

to be we imagined. How many of you, be honest,

how many of you were ever disappointed by a prom?

Yeah? Yeah, most of the men raise their hands. I

just saw that, you know.

Okay, how many you have ever gone to a big

movie and then you walk down going what a waste?

Yeah?

Have any of you ever been distressed or disappointed by

a vacation?

You know? I think job was. I found this verse

in the Bible. Here. It says here in Job six, p.

Twenty they are distressed because they had been confident. Then

they arrive only be disappointed. I think he's talking about Vegas. Okay,

distressed because they'd been confident, you know, there's gonna be good, good, Oh,

we're gonna really have fun.

Then they arrive only to be disappointed.

Now, if you are a perfectionist, you're going to live

constantly with disappointment because there's nothing perfect in this world.

The Bible says, there is nothing perfect in the world

except truth.

God's word is perfect.

It's the only thing that's going to be perfect, so

everything else is going.

To disappoint you constantly. This is not heaven.

And part of maturity and part of growing up is learning,

and you have to teach us to your kids how

to deal with disappointment and learning how to deal with failure,

because you don't succeed in everything you.

Do, and if kids don't learn how to.

Fail, they are going to be warped in life. They

have to learn how to fail good because nobody succeeds

at everything, and it's a myth that you're going to

succeed at everything, and you're gonna have to learn disappointment

and how to deal with it, not just with your circumstances,

but you're gonna have to learn how to deal with

this appointment in yourself because you let yourself down a lot,

and you finally come to the point, you know what,

all of my dreams probably aren't going to be realized,

and I'm not really as good as I think I am,

and you start getting disappointed with yourself and a lot

of guys go through midlife crisis on that. Paul says

in Romans seven eighteen, I realized I don't have what

it takes. I can will it, but I can't do it.

And so we have to stop living in denial. And

that's why I love the Bible, because the Bible says,

have the sane estimate of yourself and your gifts. Know

what you're good at. Your shaped to do some certain

things well. Now other things you're not shaped to do well. Now,

here's a fourth result of living in a fallen world,

and it is relational distance and discord. And this is

the one that really bothers us a lot. Relational distance

and discord. Every marriage conflict you've had, or conflict with

your brother or sister, your boyfriend or your girlfriend, or

your parents, all of that can be boiled down to

one word. Sin. Sin is in the bottom of every conflict,

every marriage conflict.

I want what I want, You want what you want.

And when Adam and Eve sinned, it not only disconnected

him from God, it disconnected themselves from each other. Before

sin and evil entered the world, Adam and Eve had

the only perfect relationship. They're in the Garden of Eden,

place of perfection, by themselves, no in laws, no clothes,

no kids, no misunderstanding. Adam looks at or says Eve

you're the only woman in the world for me.

And he meant it. He wasn't lying, He meant it.

And I mean they're having one good time. And Adam

and Eve had soul and a see heart to heart,

not just sex, but man, they understood each other. They

were soulmates. It's like, you know, I just know exactly

what you're thinking. And today we're going I have no

idea what she's thinking. What in the world is she thinking,

What in the world is he thinking? You know, I

read about it or heard about a psychological study this

week that they put censors on male human beings and

they measured what phrases created the greatest stress in their lives.

I'm not making this up. This is not a joke. No,

my eye fell out.

Yeah yeah, and uh, this is really true. They studied

what causes chemical reactions and a male body, and the

single phrase that creates the greatest source of stress in

the male anatomy is this phrase, honey, we need to talk.

I'm not making that up. Honey.

We need all kinds of physiological things, and it's not

in doorphins that go off in a male body when honey,

we need to talk, is said, why because we have

relational distance and discord, and the intimacy that Adam and

Eve had when there was no sin was replaced by

fear and hiding and distrust and shame, and every relationship

has had to deal with those ever since. In fact,

the Bible says this in Genesis three. They suddenly felt

shame at their nakedness, so they strung together fig leaves

together to cover themselves up. And people, men and women

have been covering up ever since. And I'm not just

talking about clothes, but we cover ourselves up emotionally, and

we don't let people get close to us, so we

don't let people see the real us, and we hide

from each other. In fact, Adam did the two things

that every human being does, every man and every woman

in relationships. He hid and he blamed when he sinned.

And God came to him, and God.

Says, where are you Adam?

Of course he knew exactly where he was, and Adam goes,

I was afraid, so I hid, as if you can

hide from God. I was afraid and I hid. What

are you hiding in your life? I was afraid and

I hid. I didn't let you see the real me.

And then he said, And then not only did he hide,

he blamed. He said, well, it's the woman that you

gave me that got me into this mess. And we've

been blaming each other for our problems ever since, hiding

and hurling, hiding and hurling, hiding and hurling. We hide

our own weaknesses and we hurl blame at other people

all the time, and it creates shame and fear and distrust,

and then we we cover ourselves up with fig leaves.

My question you this morning would be what's your fig leaf?

What's your fig leaf? What do you use to cover

up the real you? I know some people who use

humor and they make a joke out of everything because

they don't want anybody to get close to their real emotions.

And they're they're the joker. They don't let any everything's

a joke. And other people they play the martyr role,

and other people build a wall or a shell around them.

And I'm not going to ever let anybody hurt me again.

Where does that come from?

It comes from sin, which created evil, which created a

fallen planet.

We live in a fallen world.

And sin makes us defensive and distant and demanding, you know,

And we can joke about well, men are from Mars

and women are from Venus, and we don't know what

we're thinking. But the truth is, no doubt some of

you right now are in major pain right now, and

I'm sorry you're in major pain relationship. Why because of sin?

That's why. Because sin damages everything it touches. Now, there's

a fifth area, and it's spiritual discontent and darkness. Spiritual

discontent and darkness. Sin leaves a hole in your heart

that nothing can satisfy. I believe it was Pascal who

said there's a God shaped hole in our heart. We

try to fill it with everything else, money, sex, power, popularity,

but nothing. It's like putting a square in a round hole.

It doesn't fit. God can only feel that emptiness in

your heart. Saint Augustine said, thou hast made us for thyself, Lord,

and our hearts are restless until they find themselves. Indeed,

and so we go around unsatisfied, searching, unfulfilled, because we

don't know what we're missing. What we're missing is the

relationship with God that is broken by sinning.

We need to get reconnected.

Hey, thanks for joining us today on Pastor Rick's Daily Hope.

What does it take to become more loving, live more peacefully,

develop patients have self control well. Pastor Rick says, throughout

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So in his book God's Power to Change Your Life,

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Want to be.

This book really connects you with the power to actually

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