Speaker 1: You know, we really live in a world that's full
Speaker 1: of competing beliefs and values and choices, and what you
Speaker 1: believe shapes how you live and ultimately who you become.
Speaker 1: But the good news is God hasn't left us to
Speaker 1: figure it all out alone.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: In fact, today on Pastor Rick's Daily Hope, we're going
Speaker 1: to continue our series Reframing Your Worldview, where Rick Warren
Speaker 1: unpacks powerful truths from God's Word to help you see
Speaker 1: life clearly and live it with confidence and purpose. So
Speaker 1: let's get right to it with Rick and his final
Speaker 1: part of a message called how do I Know What's true?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 2: How do you know when a teacher is teaching the truth?
Speaker 2: For that matter, how do you know if I'm teaching
Speaker 2: the truth? Well, if you're teaching the Bible? First, does
Speaker 2: it square with the Bible? But there's a couple of
Speaker 2: other things that you need to look at. You might
Speaker 2: write these down. How do you know if a teacher's
Speaker 2: teaching the truth? Number one? Examine their lifestyle. Examine their lifestyle,
Speaker 2: figure out does what they say match what they're doing.
Speaker 2: In other words, if you guys hear a guy on
Speaker 2: TV preaching about giving money to the poor, and he's
Speaker 2: driving around in a Bentley. What's that say to you?
Speaker 2: He's not living what he's teaching. Okay, so you check out.
Speaker 2: Are they hypocritical? Do they walk the talk? Is their
Speaker 2: life match what they say they believe? And if it doesn't,
Speaker 2: you don't need to pay any attention to them. In fact,
Speaker 2: I would say to you, never study a philosopher without
Speaker 2: knowing their biography. In fact, those of your parents. You
Speaker 2: teach your kids this, Never study a philosophy or a
Speaker 2: thinker without knowing their biography and knowing what did it
Speaker 2: do in their life. Because some of these guys who
Speaker 2: wrote the supposed great books, their lives were a basket case.
Speaker 2: It didn't even work in their own life, much less
Speaker 2: than anybody else's. If you go and you study some
Speaker 2: of the great philosophers, some of them, many of them
Speaker 2: either committed suicide or went insane. Well, I don't want
Speaker 2: a philosophy that that's the end result. For instance, Nietzschee,
Speaker 2: who was the first guy said God is dead. Nietzschee
Speaker 2: went insane. Sigmund Freud committed suicide. Well, I'm not gonna
Speaker 2: He hated his father and all of his life, resented
Speaker 2: and rejected it. In fact, if you ever want to
Speaker 2: read a good book, I can't remember the name of it.
Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety nine, the great imminent professor of psychology,
Speaker 2: Paul Vitz, wrote a book called I Think It's Faith
Speaker 2: of the Fatherless, and he studied the one hundred most
Speaker 2: famous atheist in history. See is there anything in common?
Speaker 2: And do you know what the one hundred famous atheist
Speaker 2: and history had in common? They all hated their fathers.
Speaker 2: They were either abandoned by their father, ridiculed by their father,
Speaker 2: rejected by their father, their father died at an early age,
Speaker 2: or they hated their father. Well, that makes sense because
Speaker 2: if we're to pray our father who art in heaven,
Speaker 2: if God's like my father, no, thanks God. You got
Speaker 2: to study the psychology of atheism and know why people
Speaker 2: do what they do. Never accept the belief without looking
Speaker 2: at the lifestyle behind it, because if it doesn't work
Speaker 2: in their life, you don't need to spend any time
Speaker 2: on it. Now, notice what Jesus said here two three
Speaker 2: verses up here on the screen. Matthew seven. Beware of
Speaker 2: false teachers. You can detect them by the way they
Speaker 2: what act, just as you can identify a tree by
Speaker 2: its fruit. In other words, don't look at what they say,
Speaker 2: look at what they do. Talk as cheap. What do
Speaker 2: they do? In fact, Matthew nine sixteen and the message
Speaker 2: says this, don't be impressed with charisma. Look for character.
Speaker 2: Who preachers are is the main thing, not what they say.
Speaker 2: Charisma is highly overrated, folks. Yes, charisma has nothing to
Speaker 2: do with leadership except it is an impediment to it.
Speaker 2: The three most charismatic leaders of the twentieth century were
Speaker 2: also the worst Mao, Stalin and Hitler. Extremely charismatic men,
Speaker 2: but very evil men and caused the result of millions
Speaker 2: and millions of deaths. Charisma is highly overrated. Look for character,
Speaker 2: not charisma. In fact, Matthew seven twenty says this the
Speaker 2: best way to identify a tree or a person is
Speaker 2: the guy, the kind of fruit produced, look at their lifestyle.
Speaker 2: And the reason I'm pushing this is because I care
Speaker 2: about it very deeply. First, I'm a teacher, I'm a leader,
Speaker 2: and second, I've had friends who died unnecessarily because they
Speaker 2: followed fake leaders. I grew up in the Bay Area
Speaker 2: and then later on up in northern California in the Redwoods,
Speaker 2: in a little town called Redwood Valley, and there was
Speaker 2: a very charismatic man who moved into our little town
Speaker 2: and quote started a church. It was a cult. My
Speaker 2: next door neighbors got involved in that cult, and he
Speaker 2: was very, very charismatic, and they did whatever he told
Speaker 2: him to do, and eventually he led them all to
Speaker 2: move down to Guiana. And one day he led them
Speaker 2: all to drink poisoned kool aid and about six seven
Speaker 2: hundred of them died in the jungle. His name was
Speaker 2: Jim Jones. I had friends who died in Guiana. So
Speaker 2: I'm telling you just because somebody says they're from God
Speaker 2: doesn't mean they're from God. You should check them out.
Speaker 2: You should consider them. The other thing you do is
Speaker 2: listen for God's spirit when you're listening to a teacher.
Speaker 2: The Bible says in John fourteen, the Father will give
Speaker 2: you another helper. He's talking about his spirit, the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 2: The Father will give you another helper who will stay
Speaker 2: with you forever. He is the spirit who reveals the
Speaker 2: truth about God. So you say, when you're listening to me, God,
Speaker 2: is this guy talking the truth? Is you really telling
Speaker 2: the truth? And you listen and you listen for the
Speaker 2: spirit's confirmation. It's one of the other ways. If Tom's
Speaker 2: gonna come and talk about the fourth way we know truth.
Speaker 4: A fourth way that you can know truth is through
Speaker 4: God's commandments, through what God tells us in the direction
Speaker 4: he gives us in the Bible. Look at what two
Speaker 4: Timothy three sixteen says. All scripture is inspired by God
Speaker 4: and is useful to teach us what's true and make
Speaker 4: us realize what's wrong in our lives.
Speaker 3: It straightens us out. It teaches us to do what's right. Now.
Speaker 4: If I discover truth from the Bible, then how do
Speaker 4: I know the Bible's true? If you've ever asked that question,
Speaker 4: I honor you for asking that question. You should How
Speaker 4: do I know that this book is true? I know
Speaker 4: it's true because of the difference it's made in my life.
Speaker 4: I know it's true because Jesus said it's true. But
Speaker 4: some of you might be asking, is there any like
Speaker 4: objective truth, objective evidence that shows me that the Bible
Speaker 4: is true?
Speaker 3: The answer is yes, there is.
Speaker 4: There's just a world of objective evidence that says that
Speaker 4: this book is true. There is both external evidence and
Speaker 4: internal evidence. The external evidence that it's a historical book.
Speaker 4: You can rely on the internal evidence that there is
Speaker 4: the truth in this book. External evidence is things like
Speaker 4: the number of copies of the Bible from around the
Speaker 4: time when it was written. That's what historians look for
Speaker 4: to see if a book is accurate, it's true. For instance,
Speaker 4: a book like Homer's Iliad Love you had to read
Speaker 4: that in school, there's about six hundred and.
Speaker 3: Forty three copies of that.
Speaker 4: They all historians look back, they see all the copies,
Speaker 4: they compare them, and they go, Okay, that's what that
Speaker 4: book said. Or a book like Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars.
Speaker 4: There's only ten copies of that. The earliest one of
Speaker 4: those is a thousand years from when it was supposedly written.
Speaker 4: But a historians still saying, that's probably what the book said.
Speaker 4: How about the Bible? How many copies of the Bible?
Speaker 4: There are three hundred and sixty six copies of the
Speaker 4: Bible from when it was written and then on earliest
Speaker 4: from just seventy years afterwards. And let me tell you
Speaker 4: why that's important. It dispels what I would call an
Speaker 4: urban legend about the Bible. This urban legend is out
Speaker 4: there that somehow the Bible was passed down from generation
Speaker 4: to generation, and so it got changed as it was
Speaker 4: passed down, translated from this language to that language to
Speaker 4: this language. That's just not true. That's like alligators and
Speaker 4: the sewers of New York.
Speaker 3: It's just not true. The truth of the matter is
Speaker 3: when translators translate the.
Speaker 4: Bible, they go back to these five thousand copies from
Speaker 4: right around the time when it was written.
Speaker 3: Compare them, see how they all match.
Speaker 4: So we know it is what it is, and it
Speaker 4: says what it says. That's external evidence. External evidence is
Speaker 4: also stuff like archaeology. The cities are there, the places
Speaker 4: are there, you can go back and find them. In fact,
Speaker 4: it's sort of humorous. There's been many times in history
Speaker 4: when historians have said, well, the Bible's probably wrong, that's
Speaker 4: not really accurate, and then the Bible has proved itself
Speaker 4: to be true and the historians wrong. There was a
Speaker 4: long period of time when historians said there was no
Speaker 4: such thing as a tribe called the hit Tits like
Speaker 4: the Bible talks about in the Old Testament.
Speaker 3: Just no such thing, just somebody made it up.
Speaker 4: Until about one hundred years ago, a guy by the
Speaker 4: name of Hugo Winkler discovered at a place called Boziskoy.
Speaker 3: Ten thousand clay tablets.
Speaker 4: At the Hittite capital, and now everybody accepts it as
Speaker 4: a part of history.
Speaker 3: Historians used to.
Speaker 4: Say that when the Bible talks about Solomon having all
Speaker 4: these horses, that that was wrong. Nobody had horses back then.
Speaker 4: But then they dug up a place called Megiddo and
Speaker 4: guess what they found thousands of horse stables. That's meant
Speaker 4: that he had horses. Again and again, the Bible has
Speaker 4: proved itself to be true. There is the external evidence
Speaker 4: in history. There's also the internal evidence of the Bible itself.
Speaker 4: Internal evidence is the fact that something can be trusted.
Speaker 4: One of the internal evidences that people look for is
Speaker 4: eyewitness accounts. If something secondhand or third hand, I can't
Speaker 4: trust maybe what somebody said, but if it's an eyewitness account,
Speaker 4: I can trust it. In a court of law, if
Speaker 4: a prosecutor has two or three eyewitness accounts of something,
Speaker 4: he's got a pretty good chance of making his case. Well,
Speaker 4: the Bible is filled with eyewitnesses. Counts, Moses was there
Speaker 4: when the Red Seas split, Joshua was there, and watched
Speaker 4: the walls of Jericho fall. The disciples of Jesus stood
Speaker 4: in that upper room, and all of a sudden saw
Speaker 4: the resurrected Jesus.
Speaker 3: It's filled with eyewitness accounts.
Speaker 4: The internal evidence of the Bible is also in the
Speaker 4: fact of how this book tells one story with consistency.
Speaker 3: Now think of this with me.
Speaker 4: This book, the Bible was written over a fifteen hundred
Speaker 4: year time span. It was written on three different continents
Speaker 4: by forty different authors, kings and shepherds and fishermen and
Speaker 4: tax collectors, people from every walk of life.
Speaker 3: And yet it speaks.
Speaker 4: With consistency on the most controversial subjects of the day.
Speaker 4: And yet it tells one story from beginning to end.
Speaker 4: God's salvation and love for man, and how he came
Speaker 4: into this world through Jesus Christ.
Speaker 3: No human being could have come up with that.
Speaker 4: It's an amazing example of the power of God to
Speaker 4: write that story for our lives.
Speaker 2: The fifth and highest way that we know the truth
Speaker 2: is through Christ. To creation, conscience, consideration, commandments, and Christ.
Speaker 2: God came to earth and human form to personify truth.
Speaker 2: The Bible says Jesus was full of grace and truth.
Speaker 2: He incarnated truth. He personalized truth. Truth is not a principle.
Speaker 2: Truth is a person. Truth is relational. Truth is someone
Speaker 2: you can relate to. Truth is Jesus Christ. Now.
Speaker 3: One of the.
Speaker 2: Clearest and the most well known verses of the Bible
Speaker 2: is the next verse in your outline. Jesus said, I
Speaker 2: am the Way, the Truth, and the life. No one
Speaker 2: comes to the Father but by me. Now know this.
Speaker 2: He says, I not a religion, not a race, not
Speaker 2: a ritual, not rules and regulations. He says, I it's
Speaker 2: a person. Truth is a person. I am not. I
Speaker 2: might be not. I hope to be not. I wish
Speaker 2: it could be that I'd like to be. I am
Speaker 2: the Way, the Truth, and the life. And he says,
Speaker 2: I am the truth, not one truth, not part of
Speaker 2: the truth. He didn't say I'm a little bit of
Speaker 2: the truth. He said I am the truth. This, by
Speaker 2: the way, is what separates Jesus Christ from every other
Speaker 2: person on the planet, every other leader, every other faith.
Speaker 2: Mohammad said, I am a prophet of the truth. He said,
Speaker 2: I teach the truth. Buddhist said I am searching for
Speaker 2: the truth. He made a very famous statement at the
Speaker 2: end of his life, very famous where he said, at
Speaker 2: the end of his life, I am still searching for
Speaker 2: the truth. The Vedis, which is the Hindu scripture, says
Speaker 2: truth is very elusive. You kind of got to look
Speaker 2: forward it, so you don't really know where that's here
Speaker 2: or there. And it's going to post modern actually, and
Speaker 2: so you get all these different leaders say I'm looking
Speaker 2: for the truth, I'm teaching the truth, I point to
Speaker 2: the truth. I'm a prophet of the truth. And Jesus
Speaker 2: comes out and says it, I'm it, I am the truth. Now,
Speaker 2: that is an incredibly defsive statement because it's either right
Speaker 2: or it's wrong. He's either who he says he is,
Speaker 2: or he's the biggest liar in history. A lot of
Speaker 2: people say, oh, well, I think Jesus was a great teacher.
Speaker 2: Couldn't be couldn't be a great teacher. Impossible for Jesus
Speaker 2: to be a great teacher, because no great teacher would
Speaker 2: claim to be God if he wasn't, that's not good.
Speaker 2: In other words, if I stood up here today and
Speaker 2: I said my name is Rick Warren, I'm a good teacher,
Speaker 2: you might say, yeah, I didn't buy that. My name's
Speaker 2: Rick Warren and I'm a man of God. Okay, my
Speaker 2: name's Rick Warren. I speak for God. Yeah, okay, fine,
Speaker 2: I'm a prophet of God. Well I don't know about
Speaker 2: that one. My name is Rick Warren. Oh and by
Speaker 2: the way, I'm God. Now if I said that, would
Speaker 2: that change anything in our relationship? Well duh, because all
Speaker 2: of a sudden you got to make a decision. If
Speaker 2: I stand up. My name's Rick Warren. I am the Way,
Speaker 2: the Truth, and the Life. There's not a snowball's chance
Speaker 2: in hell you're gonna get into Heaven except through me. Hello.
Speaker 2: Now that means one of three things. I'm either a
Speaker 2: kook like the guy who thinks he's Napoleon or a
Speaker 2: fried egg Or, or I'm a con man and I'm
Speaker 2: just gonna try to get your money or something. Or
Speaker 2: I am who I say I am. Those are the options.
Speaker 2: What is Jesus when he says I am the Way,
Speaker 2: the Truth, and the Life. Nobody comes to the Father
Speaker 2: God except through me. Okay, he's either conning two point
Speaker 2: three billion people in the world right now who have
Speaker 2: totally believed a lie, or he is he was nuts
Speaker 2: he didn't know what he was talking about. Or he's
Speaker 2: who he said he was.
Speaker 3: It doesn't leave a lot.
Speaker 2: Of wis there's a guy here today, I don't know
Speaker 2: here in one of the venues. You've been coming to
Speaker 2: saddle Back for I don't know, a long time. Your
Speaker 2: husband or your wife, your girlfriend. Somebody's brought you here
Speaker 2: and you've been sitting on the fence for a long time.
Speaker 2: And you think you're in because you come to church.
Speaker 2: But you're not in yet because you haven't put your
Speaker 2: trust in Jesus yet. You're not across the line. It's
Speaker 2: time for you to get off the fence. This is
Speaker 2: your day. Be a man, make a decision. You know.
Speaker 2: I told the people up at ted, I said, everybody's
Speaker 2: betting their life on something. Okay, everybody's betting their life.
Speaker 2: An atheist is betting that there is no God. You
Speaker 2: better be right or he's going to have a big mistake.
Speaker 2: I am betting my life. I willingly tell you this.
Speaker 2: I'm betting my life that Jesus was who he said
Speaker 2: he was. What do you betting your life on? Whatever
Speaker 2: it is, you better have a good reason for it.
Speaker 2: Have you examined the evidence? Have you check it out?
Speaker 2: Have you seriously given it? Thoughty? You do well, I
Speaker 2: don't have time to get into it. Well, that's the
Speaker 2: big mistake. You need to step across the line and
Speaker 2: say I'm in. Jesus said I Am the Way, and
Speaker 2: the Bible says in John three p. Thirty three and
Speaker 2: a new living translation, those who believe him discover that
Speaker 2: God is true. Now quick, just write this down. I
Speaker 2: won't even talk about it. What do I do with
Speaker 2: the truth once I've discovered it? Four things, just right,
Speaker 2: real quickly. Number one, believe it. Believe it. The Bible
Speaker 2: tells us, continue to believe this truth and stand in
Speaker 2: it firmly. Believe it. Number two, do it. Truth is
Speaker 2: not just an intellectual exercise. It's something you do. You
Speaker 2: practice it, you apply it, you live it, you obey it.
Speaker 2: The Bible tells us, obey the truth that we've learned already,
Speaker 2: before you start learning any the other new truth, why
Speaker 2: do you start doing the ones you already know? Believe it?
Speaker 2: Do it? Number three stand for it, Stand for it.
Speaker 2: Don't be ashamed in a relevant or relational postmodern world
Speaker 2: that says, oh, it doesn't really matter. Stand for truth.
Speaker 2: The Bible tells us our responsibility is to never oppose
Speaker 2: the truth. But to stand for it at all times.
Speaker 2: We need to be people of the truth in a
Speaker 2: relevativistic age. And then number four, spread it, Spread the truth.
Speaker 2: The Bible says we must support believers who go on
Speaker 2: trips like this so we can work together and spreading
Speaker 2: the truth. Probably talking about the peace plan. Let's read
Speaker 2: the last verse aloud together. Let everything you do reflect
Speaker 2: your love of the truth and the fact that you
Speaker 2: are in dead earnest about it. The friends, I'll be
Speaker 2: honest with you. There's a lot in this book that
Speaker 2: I don't understand, and there's a lot in this book
Speaker 2: that is uncomfortable to me. But the fact is, it
Speaker 2: is the truth, and it is a map that it
Speaker 2: always takes me to where it tells me it's going
Speaker 2: to go. Let's bow our heads. Would you pray this prayer? God,
Speaker 2: I'm stepping across the line today, Jesus Christ. I want
Speaker 2: to believe you are the way, the truth, the life.
Speaker 2: I want to know the truth so the truth will
Speaker 2: set me free. I want to believe it, I want
Speaker 2: to do it. I want to stand for it, and
Speaker 2: I want to spread the truth. I'm in I'm putting
Speaker 2: my trust in you, in your name I pray Amen.
Speaker 2: Hi everybody, this is Rick and I hope you enjoyed
Speaker 2: today's broadcast. You know, if you just prayed that prayer
Speaker 2: for the very first time, or you just committed your
Speaker 2: life to Jesus again today, would you let me know
Speaker 2: about it. There's something real about sharing your commitment. So
Speaker 2: write me Rick at Pastorick dot com and say, Rick,
Speaker 2: I prayed that prayer of commitment. I gave my life
Speaker 2: to Christ. And I'll send you some material that will
Speaker 2: help you on your journey with Jesus. And I'll also
Speaker 2: pray for you. God bless you. Wow.
Speaker 1: Some powerful words from Pastor Rick today. And now this
Speaker 1: is really one of my favorite parts of the broadcast.
Speaker 1: This is letters from our listeners. And now here's Rick.
Speaker 2: One of the greatest joys of my day is reading
Speaker 2: letters from our listeners. It truly is inspiring to see
Speaker 2: how God is working in your lives, and it encourages
Speaker 2: me just as much as I hope to encourage you.
Speaker 2: So today I want to share a note from Heather,
Speaker 2: who has been discovering the incredible benefits of studying God's
Speaker 2: word every day. Heather wrote to me, she said, Hi,
Speaker 2: Pastor Rick, a friend of mine recently sent me your podcast,
Speaker 2: and I've been feeling lost and helpless and I didn't
Speaker 2: I wasn't sure what to pray, or how to pray,
Speaker 2: or when to pray. And it's like I hit a
Speaker 2: wall and I haven't been sure how to get back
Speaker 2: on track. Well, your message really spoke truth to me,
Speaker 2: and it made me realize the missing pieces I had
Speaker 2: in my life because I was not in God's Word daily.
Speaker 2: I was basically living my life without God, and I
Speaker 2: was trying to do everything on my own. Well, Pastor Rick,
Speaker 2: it goes without saying that doing life without God has
Speaker 2: been miserable failure. So thank you for stirring the Holy
Speaker 2: Spirit in my heart with the words that I needed
Speaker 2: to hear. I have now made the commitment to read
Speaker 2: God's Word every day and to pray daily, and I
Speaker 2: even started praying in the cars I go about my
Speaker 2: day just like you, it's hard for me to close
Speaker 2: my eyes and not fall asleep you were listening. Please
Speaker 2: keep doing what you're doing and reaching people who really
Speaker 2: need to hear about Jesus and God's love. Well, Heather,
Speaker 2: I am so glad to hear that you're back in
Speaker 2: God's word and that you're making it a part of
Speaker 2: your daily life. There really isn't anything more important than
Speaker 2: deepening your relationship with Him, and I love the fact
Speaker 2: that you are praying every day, especially keeping your eyes
Speaker 2: open while you're driving. Do you or somebody know or
Speaker 2: even feel lost yourself like Heather once did? Well, the
Speaker 2: best way to find hope and strength is by staying
Speaker 2: connected to God every day. That's the purpose of Daily
Speaker 2: Hope and that's why I started it, to help people
Speaker 2: like Heather dive into God's Word and experience his encouragement
Speaker 2: on a daily basis. Now, our Daily Hope devotionals and
Speaker 2: our podcasts are completely free and they're delivered straight to
Speaker 2: your inbox every morning. So if you're not getting these,
Speaker 2: sign up today and start each day with biblical wisdom
Speaker 2: and encouragement from God's Word. Just go to pastorik dot
Speaker 2: com and sign up today.
Speaker 1: Hey, be sure to join us next time when we
Speaker 1: look into God's Word for our Daily hope. This program
Speaker 1: is sponsored by Pastor Rick's Daily Hope and your generous
Speaker 1: financial support