Rick Warren - What’s the Solution 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. Well,

let's get to it. Here's Rick with part one of

a message called What's the Solution.

We've been in this series that I'm calling Framing your Worldview,

and we're learning to look at life from God's viewpoint

as it really is, not from our limited human perspective,

but seeing life from God's point of view, and we're

looking at the major questions of life. We started the

first week with why does it matter what I believe?

Does it really matter what I believe?

I mean, we dealt with what we call the sincerity

myth that it doesn't matter what you believe as long

as you're sincere. The fact is you can be sincerely wrong,

you can sincerely you.

Know, make mistakes.

I've done it many many times and so have you,

and so it does matter what we believe. If it's

not the truth, then we have a shaky foundation when

the earthquakes of life come through. So then the second

way we looked at, well, how do you know what's true?

And how do you know what's real, what's real and

what's unreal. In the world of reality television, a lot

of things early aren't that real, virtual reality, And we

talked about the ways that you can test the truth.

How do you know if somebody's telling you the truth

or not? And we looked at that in quite detail.

Then the third week we looked at who am I

and where did I come from and the implications of

that in terms of your value, your vision, your direction

in life. And then last week we dealt with the

question on how did the world get so messed up?

And we talked about the fact that we live in

a broken planet, that when sin and entered and evil

entered the world, that we live on a fallen planet.

Today we're looking at what's the solution based on what

we talked about last week, that the world is full

of problems, that because we live on a planet that

has sin and has evil in it. Nothing is perfect.

There is literally nothing perfect on this planet. You're not perfect.

I'm not perfect, no relationships perfect. Things don't work right,

everything's damaged. And so as a result, the world has

a lot of problems, a lot of problems. And today

we're going to look at what is the solution to

the world's problems, particularly the root cause of the world's problems.

You know, unlimited, their unlimited approaches to solving the symptoms

in the world. And you can see all of the

symptoms all around you, the many, many problems and deal

with the kind of a band aid approach to surface issues.

But we have to get beneath that if we're going

to make a real difference in the world. You know,

when I get weeds in my yard, I don't just

go out and just you know, cut them off with

a pair of scissors. I pull them out by the root.

If I just cut off the symptom, they're going to

grow right back. And a lot of the problems in

your life, in your family, in your career, in our

nation and in the world, we tend to treat them

as symptoms and we just cut off the problem at

the top, but the root is still there, and so

they just keep growing back and back. Now on your handout,

I've listed seven popular approaches to dealing with problems in

the world, and as I go through these real quickly,

you're going to recognize every one of them. The first

one is the political approach. You're all familiar with that,

which is basically solved the world's problems by passing laws

and creating policies. Solve the world's problems through politics. And

the truth is a lot of people genuinely believe that government,

not God, is the answer to the human condition. And

I've been in a number of different meetings. You take

God out of the picture, basically all you've got left

is politics, and they think that government, not God, is

the solution and we just need better laws. I call

this salvation by legislation. The only problem is you can't

force anybody to change. A law has never changed anybody anywhere, anytime.

It may cause you to conform the behavior, but a

law has never.

Changed a belief.

It's never changed an attitude, it's never changed character, it's

never changed a prejudice.

You have to deal with something.

Much deeper inside a human being than simply create a law,

and so salvation by legislation is not the ultimate answer

to the problems in the world. Then the second one

is the educational approach, and that basically, as you know,

all of the problems in the world the result of ignorance,

and if we could just get everybody educated, everybody taught,

everybody learned, then the world would be a better place. Now,

of course, we believe in education. Part of the Peace

plan is to help eliminate illiteracy all around the world.

In fact, I don't know if you know this, but

ninety percent of all the schools ever created in history

were started by Christians, including places like Harvard and Yale

and Princeton. Christianity and Judaism are educational religions and they've

started more schools than anything in history. In fact, ninety

percent of all the hospitals in the world were started

by Christians somewhere around the world, usually the first one

in every nation. So obviously we believe in education, but

we don't believe in salvation by education because the reality

is education is not enough. There are a lot of terrorists,

and there are a lot of tyrants, and there are

a lot of criminals and there are a lot of

dictators who are highly educated, and you can be educated,

but it doesn't change your character, so it's not getting

to the root. The third approach is what I call

the material or the financial approach to the world's problems.

And these are people who see everything in the world

in economic terms, as if every problem has an economic solution. Now,

of course economics matters, but it is a surface issue.

It doesn't deal with the root of human behavior. And

in the educational or the excuse me, the material of

the financial approach, the idea is we just need to

help people earn more. And I would call this salvation

by compensation. You know, if we just had everybody wealth,

you're and of course as Christians, we believe in eliminating poverty.

It's part of the peace plan, assisting the poor. Now,

there are two different primary versions of the salvation by

compensation or the material approach the world problem. There's socialism

there's capitalism. Socialism basically says we're going to take all

of the money and put it in a pool, and

we'll redistribute it equally, and we're going to take a

little bit of yours and give it to somebody has

a little bit less. And then capitalism says no, we

believe in free market enterprise, and we believe in entrepreneurship,

and that in creating the freedom for people to start businesses,

they will naturally create use their own God given creativity

to better their economic income.

Well, the bottom line is.

Just helping people get more money does not solve all

the problems in the world. I know a lot of

people I told you last week who or I call

them frms, famous, rich and miserable, and having a lot

of money does not solve all your problems. If it did,

the people who are wealthiest would be the happiest in

the world.

And that's just not true.

Then we have another approach of the world's problems, which

I call the psychological approach, and that is, you know,

what we need to do is just help people change

the way they feel about themselves. And we need to

help them deal with their past, and deal with their

relationship and deal with their self esteem. And I would

call this salvation by actualization. As if the whole goal

of life is just to take all the stress out

of your life, it's not. You were made for more

than just to live a stress free life. You were

made for more than happiness. You were created for a purpose.

You were made by God and for God. And until

you understand that life isn't going to make sense. Then

there's the sociological approach to the world's problems, which says,

let's change all the social structures of society, and if

we do that, then everything will be great. And at

the beginning of the twentieth century, there were a lot

of social activists who genuinely believed, even Christians, that if

you just change the social structures of society, then things

will naturally get better. And after the twentieth century, where

we had more people died, more people killed, the Holocaust

of six million Jews, and so many evil things in

the world, people realize that there's a deeper issue than

just the social structures salvation by association. And then there's

the biological approach, which is, well, we're just gonna focus

on the human body and we're going to create the

perfect human body. And there are a lot of exciting

applications today taking place in science and biology, and there's

you know, the gene mapping and the genome project and DNA,

and people are learning things about stem cells and they're

even doing this stuff about cloning, all these people trying

to create the perfect body or the perfect uh you know,

human specimen. Biotechnology, and the goal here of biology is

a pill for every problem. In other words, it's salvation

by medication. And you know you got a problem with this,

well got we've got a pill for it. You got

a problem for that, We've got a pill for it.

And then every problem can be solved by a pill,

or by a or a procedure. You know, you could

actually add a one on there. Salvation by technology, you know,

salvation by innovation, the technological approach. I've been to a

lot of conferences just recently, been invited to speak at them,

hearing about exciting developments and technology. But as much as

I believe in the Internet, it's not the savior of mankind.

As much as I believe in technological innovation, innovation is

not salvation. Now, each of these things that I just

went through very quickly, they have a role, and they

have an important role, but they don't get to the

root cause of all the problems on the planet, and

they don't deal with human beings directly. The bottom line

is this, you have to change the hearts of people.

But if there's going to be any long term change.

The biblical approach is God's way changing the hearts. That's

salvation by transformation, and God specializes in that in changing

prejudiced people into loving people, and hateful people into kind people,

and self centered people into unselfish people. No law will

ever teach people how to love. Only God can do that.

You have to have salvation by transformation, and it starts

in the hearts. It begins inside you look up here

on the screen. The Bible says this and proverbs for

above all else, guard your heart, for it is the what.

Well spring of life. It means it's the root.

It's the root, it's you know, each of these other

things have a role, but they don't attack the root.

And this is the root of all our problems. The

well spring of life is your heart. It's your character,

it's who you are inside. I guess they'd say it

like this when you look at the world. The heart

of the problem is a problem of the heart. The

heart of the problem is a problem of the heart.

We're not going to see any changes in society until

there's changes in the self. Changes inside. The heart of

the problem is a problem with the heart. There's an

old story about a father who his son was bored

on a rainy day and they didn't have any games,

and he didn't know what to do, and so he

found a picture of a map inside a magazine, a

map of the world, and he took this map of

the world, pulled it out, and then he cut up

the map of the world in little tiny pieces and

put it on the table and he said, you know, put

this all together. He thought, that'll keep him busy, you know,

putting the world all together. And you know, about fifteen

minutes later, the son came back and he had it

all taped altogether with a scotch tape, and the map

of the world was perfect, perfect, and he goes, this

is a young kid. He goes, how did you do that?

How did you put it together so fast? And he said, well,

you know, dad, on the back page, on the back

of that map was a picture of a man. And

he said, you know what, and I got the men

put together the world fit two. It starts in the heart.

And the fact is only changed. Hearts can change the world.

Only changed people can change the world. So that's why

today we're going to look at what changes the heart,

what makes the changes in me that can make a

change in the world. Now, Because we live in a

fallen world, a broken planet, human beings have heart diseases.

Now I'm not talking about physical heart diseases. I'm not

talking about having plaque in your arteries. I'm talking about

spiritual heart diseases.

And as I've traveled all.

Around the world, I have found that there are many,

many universal heart diseases. You can find them in every culture,

every single culture. I don't have time to go into

them all to day. Let me just give you five.

I want you to write these down. Five common universal

heart does diases, and then the symptoms that we see

in human beings when they have this disease in the heart.

The first common human heart disease is guilt.

It's guilt.

And the reason it's guilt is because nobody's perfect.

I blow it, you blow it.

I don't measure up to my own standards, much less gods,

and so we walk around with guilt. Now, it is

impossible to be happy and guilty at the same time.

It's impossible to feel good about yourself and bad about

yourself at the same time. So, because many people live

with guilt, The symptom is many people feel worthless. They

feel worthless, and it is guilt that causes that feeling

of worthlessness in their lives. The Bible says this in

Psalm forty, verse twelve. It's up here on the screen,

David says, you know, I was so swamped by guilt.

I couldn't see my way clear. I had more guilt

in my heart than hair on my head. That's not

hard for some of us. And it was so heavy,

the guilt, heavy guilt was so heavy that my heart

gave out. You can't feel good and guilty at the

same time, and so a lot of people feel worthless.

Here's a second problem common heart disease. Compulsion. Compulsion. And

when I talk about compulsion, it's this there are things

in your life that you know are not good for you,

but you do them anyway. And there are things in

your life that you know would be good for you,

but you don't do them.

Now, you may not call.

These addictions, but they are. And every one of us

have compulsions in our lives that you habitually act in

self defeating ways. You do it all the time, and

you act in ways that defeat relationships and you act

in ways that defeat your health, and you act in

ways that defeat your happiness, and they are compulsions. And

as a result of this, you say, I'd like to change,

but I can't. Lot of things that I would like

to do, but I don't. There are things that I

know would be good for me, like exercise. How many

you know exercise would be good for you?

Yeah? And how many of you wish you did it more? Yeah?

I'm not going to ask how many of you do it.

The bottom line is that we know the right thing,

but we don't always do it, and we feel powerless

to change. That's a symptom. The symptom is many people

feel powerless. They not only feel worthless because of guilt,

they feel powerless because of the compulsions, the habitual actions

in their life.

That they can't seem to change.

I want to read a fairly extended passage out of

Scripture to you. It's in Romans chapter seven. It says

this up here on the screen. What I don't understand

about myself is that I side one way, but then

I act another, doing things I absolutely despise.

This is Paul talking.

God's command is necessary, but I need something more. In

other words, just knowing the right thing to do doesn't

help me change.

I need some power.

I feel powerless to change it, for I know the

law that's God's law, but I still can't keep it.

And if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging

my best intentions, I obviously need help.

I realize that I don't have what it takes. I

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

This is like I'd like to go on a diet,

but I can't stay on it. I'd like to stop

being so angry, but I don't know how to control

my temper. I decide to do good, but I don't

really do it. Or I decide not to do bad,

but then I do it anyway. Are any of you relating.

To this mildly? Okay?

My decisions such as they are don't result in actions.

You know.

Most New Year's resolutions, our studies have shown are let

go within seventeen days. Okay, My decisions such as they

are I don't result in actions. Something has gone wrong

deep within me. That's a heart problem and gets the

better of me every time. It happens so regularly that

it's predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin

is there to trip me up. I truly delight in

God's commands, but it's pretty obvious that not all of

me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel.

I love this message paraphrase of Roman seven. Parts of

me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it,

they take charge. I've tried everything and nothing helps. I'm

at the end of my rope. Is there no one

who can do anything for me? In other words, how

can I change? Isn't that the real question? The answer,

thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He

acted to set things right in this life of contradictions

where I want to serve God with all my heart

and mind, but I'm pulled by the influence of sin

to do something totally different.

That's Romans seven. You might want to go and read

that again today.

He's talking about how compulsions help us feel powerless.

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

I always take away from his message. Here's Rick to

tell you how you can help support this ministry.

Jesus told his disciples that they should live their lives

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