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

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 ready for Rick and part one of a

message called how did the World get so Messed Up?

Not everything in the world is good, Not.

Everything in the world is happy, Not everything in the

world is beautiful. In fact, real evil does exist in

the world. You can pick up any kind of newspaper.

You start going through it, you're going to find out

that in the international section, you're going to find terrorism

and war and genocide. You go through the national section,

you're going to find political payoffs and lies and scams

and churches set on fire. You go through the local section,

you're going to find rapes and abuse and murder and arson.

You go through the business section, you're going to find scandals.

You're going to find fraud, graft, embezzlement. You go through

the sports section, you'll find drug use, illegal gambling, adultery.

You go through the entertainment section and find too many

scandals and send to even mention. No rational person can

really deny that evil, real evil exists in this world.

Now we're in this series on Worldview, seeing the world

and seeing my life as it really is we'd like

it to be, but as it really is, and we're

looking at six major questions. We've already looked at first week,

does it really matter.

What I believe?

And we talked about the sincerity method. It's not enough

to say well, as long as you're sincere, you can

be sincerely wrong. And then the second week we looked

at how do I know what's really true?

I mean, what are that?

And we looked at the five ways you can test

something to know whether it's true or not. And then

last week we looked at who am I and where

did I come from? Today we're gonna look at this

fourth question, how did the world get so messed up?

If you'll take out your message notes, we're gonna look

at four things I want us to look at the

reason it got messed up, and then we're gonna look

at the results.

How what happened to the world.

Then we're gonna look at God's rationale, why did God

allow it to happen? And then finally your response, now,

let's get right into it, into the red. How did

the world get.

So messed up?

Well, the reason is is you might write it down,

We've all sinned. We have all sinned, and when we sin,

it brings evil into the world. Now what is sin, Well,

sin is any attitude or any action against God.

That's what it is.

It's any attitude or any action against God. And when

we do things that are against God or think things

that are against God, it brings sin into the world

and it creates evil. Now where did it all get started, Well,

it started back for the very first couple, Adam and Eve,

back in.

The Garden of Eden. In fact, the Bible says this,

look in your outline.

Sin came into the world because of what one man did,

that's Adam.

And with sin came what death.

There was no death prior to this, but he said

it came into the world with sin, and it didn't

just stop with Adam and Eve. We've all been culprits.

To the next verse, let's read it aloud. There is

not a single person in all the earth who is

always good and never sins.

Well, that's kind of a no brainer.

I've never met anybody who's ever claimed to be perfect,

not one.

I don't measure up.

To my own standards, much less God's a perfect God.

I disappoint myself, I disappoint others much less not living

up to a.

Standard of perfection.

So sin is a universal problem, one hundred percent. The

Bible says, all have sin. That includes me, That includes you,

It includes the pope, it includes everybody who's ever lived.

All have sinned.

The Bible says, there is none righteous, no, not one.

The Bible says, there's not a just man upon the

earth that doeth good and sinneth not. The Bible says,

if we claim we have not sinned, we deceive ourselves,

and the truth is not in us. In other words,

if you say you've never sinned, it is lying, because

the fact is all of us have had attitudes.

And actions against God.

Now you may not understand this, of known this, but

there are actually three kinds of wrongdoing in the Bible.

One is called sin, one is called transgressions, and one

is called iniquity. What's the difference between sins and transaggressions

and iniquities? Sin is actually an English term. It's actually

an archery term. And it was an archery term. If

you were out shooting a bow and arrow and you

had a big, you know, target that you're shooting at,

and if you shot it and the arrow fell short,

it missed the mark. That is called sin. And sin

literally just means falling short. It means missing the mark.

You shoot an arrow toward the target and it doesn't

even get there. It falls short. And that's why the

Bible says in Romans three twenty three, all have sin

and fallen short. I've got a friend who's a pastor

in Texas, and he was talking about this first one time.

He said, we've all fallen short. And he said, but

thank God he forgives our falling shorts. I've had a

few falling shorts.

Too, so of both kinds.

But the point here is that when we fail to

meet God's purpose, if you don't fulfill God's purpose for

your life, you're falling short.

If there are.

Things that God wants you to do with your life

and you haven't done them, you're falling short. The Bible

says we've all done this, we've all fallen short. That's

called a sin. Now, the word transgressions the exact opposite.

It means to go past it. It means to go

not to fall short, but to go past. Transgression means

you go past the law. It means it's a deliberate, intentional,

willful decision to break the law.

In other words, when.

The law says you go sixty miles an hour and

I go eighty or ninety, that's a transgression. I am

intentional going past the law. You see the difference between

sin and transgression. One's falling short and one is going past.

And when I know that God says to do something,

that said, I want to do.

It anyway, that's not falling short.

That's going past. God has said there are certain parameters

in your life, and he says, I.

Don't want you to do these things.

And when I go past them and I break God's commandments,

that's a transgression. And then the third one is the

word iniquity, and iniquity actually talks about my heart.

It's the attitude of my heart.

It's the basic disposition to do my own thing, to wander.

The Bible compares human beings often to sheep, because sheep

are prone to wander, and the Bible says, all we,

like sheep, have gone astray. We've each turned into his

own way. In other words, everybody's done their own thing.

God says I want you to do this, and well,

I think I'll do that, and somebody says, I think

I'm gonna do that, and someonell says we have a

tendency to wander away from God. I will calls that iniquity.

It is my natural disposition. It's the intentions of my heart.

It can be jealousy, it can be anger, it can

be envy, it can be lying, it can all those

kind of it's the heart attitudes now in Psalms and

actually here on the screen Psalm thirty two, you can

see all three words used in the same verse. I

acknowledge my sin. That's the falling short to you. I

did not cover up my iniquity. That's my attitude to

just do my own thing. And I confess my transgressions.

That's going beyond breaking laws. And you forgive or forgave

my guilt. Now, the question to me is why do

we do this?

Why do we choose to ignore God? Why do when.

God made us, God loves us, God created us, We

owe everything God. Why do we choose to ignore God

and do our own thing?

Why do you sin? Why do I sin? Well?

The answers threefold. It's your nature, it's your nurture, and

it's your culture. Nature, nurture and culture. The reasons we

send first nature, The Bible says, because I'm a human being,

I got a human nature, which I got from Adam

the first men, and you inherited a natural tendency to

do your own thing. Look at these verses up here

on the screen. The Bible says Romans eighty seven. Your

sinful nature is always hostile to God. It never did

obey God's laws and it never will. It's like a

little kid who doesn't want to obey their parents. I

want to do my own thing, Mommy, I say no, no.

None of you ever had your children say no to you?

Right?

Who taught them to say no? Nobody did that one

they learned that was in their nature. I want to

do what I want to do. That's called human nature

or sinful nature. It's a tendency to be self centered

that when I walk into room, I don't naturally think

about what you need.

I think about what do they think of me? You

do too, you.

Walk in the room, you're not automatically talking to somebody,

going how can.

I meet this person's deepest needs. That's not automatically on

your mind.

What you usually think is what can I get out

of them? Or what do they think of me? You're

always focused on yourself, and that's nature. It's your nature,

and the Bible tells us this in Jeremiah, the heart

is deceitful above all things.

What does that mean?

It means that you and I have an amazing ability

to lie to ourselves and believe our own lies. And

we can tell ourselves it's not really a problem when

it is, and it's no big deal when it is

a big deal, and it'll get over it when we're

not going to get over it. We have an amazing ability.

To lie to ourselves.

You do and I do, And that's why we need

other people in our lives. That's why we need the

Bible to tell us the truth because we don't always

see the truth. And just because your heart tells you

to do something. Your heart can be lying to you.

Just because your heart tells you to do something doesn't

mean it's.

The right thing.

I've had murderers say, well, you know my heart told

me to do it. Well, your heart could be wrong,

and so we have this in our nature. Then the

second thing is nurture. And the truth is you learned

to send from the people around you. Also, in fact,

you've got some good models grown up because.

Did you figure this out? Your parents weren't perfect.

Have you noticed that they weren't perfect, and so you

picked up some of their imperfections. And depending on the

kind of family you grow up in, you learn, for instance,

either to stuff your anger and be manipulative or be

a martyr, or you learned to blow up with your

anger and explode. You tend to be either a skunk

or a turtle. Turtles pull into the shell and then

they manipulate.

Skunks stink up the place.

And by the way, I'll tell you this, skunks usually

marry turtles. Okay, it's just the fact of life. But

where did you get that?

Well, your nature.

Is to automatically get upset when you're offended, obviously, and

then your nurture taught you which way to do it.

So nature makes you a sinner, and nurture makes you

a sinner. It makes me a sinner. Okay, nobody's perfect.

And then the Bible tells us that bad on the screen,

bad company corrupts good character. Have you ever seen a

kid get with the wrong group in high school and

go bad? Well, of course you have why because it's

not just my nature to do wrong. It's when I

get around other people. My nurture helps me do wrong.

And other people tend to teach me to do wrong.

And so I want to be cool, and I do

that too, and so I learn anger, and I learn abuse,

and I learn lying and things like that. Then the

third thing that helps us to easiness and is culture.

And culture, the Bible tells us, is always pulling us down.

It's not pulling us up, it's pulling us down. Culture

doesn't want to make you a better person. It wants

to make you a selfish person. And all the advertisements said,

you got to do it for yourself, You got to

look out for number one. You got to do what's

best for you, forget other people. Think about what's best

for you. And sin and satan used culture to kind of,

you know, get you to do the wrong things. And

that's why the Bible says this in Romans twelve on

the screen, don't copy the behavior or customs of this world.

I love the Phillips paraphrase. It says, don't let the

world squeeze you in its mold.

Don't let the world squeeze you in its mold, try

to dominate your life and so let God transform you instead.

This is why we choose to sin now this morning.

I'm not so interested in the fact that we blow it.

We all do that.

My question is what has it done to the world,

Why does God allow it?

And what should be my response?

And that's what we're going to look at in today's message.

But before we really get.

Into it, there's another verse I want you to see

since we're talking about sin in this particular Sunday. Here

on the screen it says this, only those with clean

hands and pure hearts will receive a blessing from the Lord. Now,

I want your life to be blessed, and the Bible

says the key to blessing is a clean hand and

a pure heart. What does that mean? You've got to

be perfect to be blessed. Oh no, if you had

to be perfect to be blessed, nobody would ever get blessed.

What it says is you have to have clean hands

and a pure art. What's that mean is it means

you've been washed. It means you've confessed. It means you've

admitted to God. God, I blow it. God knows you're

not going to be perfect. He just wants you to

admit it. How did the world get so messed up? Well,

it God messed up with Adam, and then we've all

followed in his example. Every time I sin, it damages something,

either me, another person, my relationship to God.

The world, or something.

Every time you do it does that too, And that's

why God doesn't want us to do it. He knows

the ways that our best. So the reason the world's

in a mess is because we've all sinned. Okay, we

got that one down. The question then is what's the result.

And the result is this, you might write it down.

We live in a fallen world. Fallen world. The Bible

calls it the fall. It is a broken planet. In

other words, everything on this planet has been damaged, injured, spoiled,

corrupted in some way by the entry of evil into

the world, which was not here before sin, there was

no evil in the world. It was a perfect place.

God created it perfect. But we do live in a

fallen world and a lot of people don't understand this,

and that's why they ask this question all the time, why.

Is this happening? Why is that happening?

And when they ask that questions because they don't have

the worldview, they don't understand. We live in a broken planet,

we live in a fallen world, and that's why they

ask all of well, why is this happening? What's because

the world is not perfect, this is not heaven.

You know, people are being transformed by these messages. In fact,

here's Rick with a letter from one of our listeners.

You know, no matter how bad things seem, you can

always trust that God is active in your life, working

things out for the good. While you are waiting. God

is working. God always has your best interest at heart.

He's a good God. Today, I want to give you

an example from a note that I got from a

young man, Tyler, who has seen how God is always

there even when circumstances seemed to be their worst. Tyler

wrote me said, you know, Rick, I haven't had a

close relationship with Christ. But then several events occurred in

my life all at once. First, my girlfriend broke up

with me, and that was the biggest heartache that I

could imagine for both of us. Then my friends left

for college the same week, and third, my dad left

for California to start a new job, leaving me in Ohio.

All of this hit me at once, and I was

a complete mess. But with guidance from others and realizing

this was a scheduled appointment from God himself, I found

Christ through your Daily Hope podcast and through prayer and

in going to church, I finally found the joy in

my life again.

And I'm a changed person.

Every day now, I listen to you, Rick, and I

read my daily devotional, and I look at life with

a whole new perspective. You know, before I was living

for me, I wasn't living for God. But this journey

has been so amazing. God is so good and the

best part is that I can wake up every day

knowing that He loves me and will listen to me,

and that Jesus Christ will take my worries from me.

I'm so thankful, Rick, that God woke me up and

changed me into a better and healthier person that I

am today. And I'm thankful for my savior, Jesus Christ.

So God bless you well.

Thanks Tyler, Thanks for writing that encouraging letter. You have

experienced firsthand how much God cares for you, even in

the smallest details of your life, and through this what

was a very difficult season, he led you to Jesus,

the greatest gift you could ever receive. So did you

know that the Bible says in Luke fifteen, right now,

all of Heaven is rejoicing because you're a part of

God's family. The Bible says they have a party in

heaven every time one and steps across the line. And

what that means that you and I are now brothers.

Did you know that we're brothers in Christ and your

church family are your brothers and sisters here to walk

alongside you. So, Tyler, welcome to the Family of God.

And as you grow in your faith, staying connected with

a strong church community is so so important. I want

you to surround yourself with people who will encourage you

in the Lord, who will pray for you, who will

help you stay strong in your journey with Jesus and

just watch and see how God moves in your life

as you faithfully follow Him into your future. By the way,

you also mentioned that you listen to the Daily Hope podcast.

For anybody who hasn't checked that out yet, it is

completely free. It's completely available on all major platforms. It's

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get your podcasts. Also, listen anytime by just going to

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And they can keep seeking God and He will guide

them godless.

Hey, be sure to join us next time when we

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

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