Rick Warren - Learn From the Past to Walk Forward With God

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Take out your message notes. We're in a series on
the ten Great Tests of life, and we've been looking
at the life of Daniel, who lived about twenty five
hundred years ago. At fifteen years of age, he was
taken as a prisoner of war to the Babylonian Empire
with about twenty five percent of the Jewish nation. But
there he just continued to pass every test of life,

(00:20):
and when he was eighty five, seventy years later, he
is the second most powerful man in the most powerful
empire in the world. Now we don't have time to
review all of what's happened. But in Daniel chapter five,
where we are now King Nebekonezar, who was the most
famous king Babylonian king, built the great hanging Walls of Babylon.

(00:40):
He's died and he reigned for forty five years. And
now his grandson, a guy named bel Shazar, is the king.
Bel Shazar was a terrible leader, an absolute terrible leader.
He was a party boy. He was a spoiled royal brat,
and all he liked to do is drink party with
his friends. And so, sensing weakness, I'm setting up where

(01:03):
we're going. The two biggest enemies at that time, the
Meads and the Persians joined together, Darius the Mead and
Cyrus the Great, and they came to besiege this great
walled city of Babylon. Now it's pretty safe city. You
were fraid. These river runs through it. It's got walls
fifty to eighty feet in depth. It's a pretty fortified city.

(01:24):
But at this moment that we're going to look at
this weekend, these two armies are camped around the city
of Babylon waiting to attack. And Belshazzar the King, this
young kid, he's not worried about it. He's over confident.
And so what does the party boy do when he's
under attack. He throws a party. And in this chapter

(01:47):
he invites a thousand of his friends to the royal palace,
and he has and they all get drunk. They all
get drunk. They're having a really fun time. And then
the king gets a very bad idea. And here's what
he says. He says, and he's drunk. He said, hey,
you guys, when my grandfather was the Emperor of Babylon,

(02:08):
and when we sacked Jerusalem and destroyed it and took
over Israel, he said, we stole all of the temple utensils,
all of the goblets and all that stuff, and it's
been in storage here in Babylon now for forty five years.
He says, how about this, Let's get out the temple
goblets and we're gonna drink in them and toast our

(02:31):
pagan gods. Bad idea, bad idea. This is called being sacrilegious,
and it's making fun of somebody else's religion. It's taking
something that is created to honor God and instead misusing
it to dishonor God. And you turn something sacred into
something profane. And let's look at this story and then

(02:55):
we're gonna draw some lessons out of it. Okay, here's
what it says. In the Bible Daniel, chapter five. King
Belshazer gave a great banquet for a thousand of his nobles,
and they all got drunk. When bel Shazer was drinking
his wine, he gave orders to bring in the gold
and silver goblets that Nevakandezer, his predecessor, had taken from
the Temple of God in Jerusalem. Now, he thought it'd

(03:15):
be fun to drink using these goblets intended to worship God.
And so it says, so they did. They used the cups,
laughing and making toast all the pagan gods and idols. Now, suddenly,
it says, a finger of a human hand appeared in
the Royal Banquet Hall and began writing supernaturally, writing on

(03:38):
the plaster walls of the Royal Palace and the king,
it says, and all the guests watched this hand as
it wrote. Now, now this is a hand without a body. Okay,
anybody remember the thing in the Adams family. I don't
know if thing was around then, but you know he
could have. You know, he was detached. It certainly was

(04:00):
one of those giant foam fingers that have the angel game.
You know, we're number one, But evidently this is a
kind of a freaky Friday thing. A hand shows up
and it starts writing on the wall. By the way,
have you ever heard the expression the handwriting is on
the wall. It's from this story twenty five hundred years ago,

(04:21):
this idiom that we use now the handwriting is on
the wall, which means that's a warning bad news is coming.
You're about to get fired. The handwriting is on the wall.
Anytime you use the handwriting is on the wall. It's
from this story in the Bible, and I could give
you four or five hundred other phrases, expressions, and idioms

(04:41):
that actually came out of Bible stories. The handwriting on
the wall is referring to the fact that Belle Shazer
is going to be warn he's going to die that
night because he has been sacrilegious and he's disrupted a
god and he hasn't been humble. Now, this is a warning,
but this is the origin of it. Now, in verse six,
it says this, when the king saw this, this hand

(05:04):
writing on the wall, it scared him to death. Well,
I guess so, said. His face turned pale, and he
was so frightened that his knees knocked together and his
hips gave way. Now I love this last phrase, his
hips gave way. That's just a polite ways saying he
soiled his pants. He was moved, if you get my drift. Okay, Okay,

(05:28):
the guy got diarrhea. Now I don't know about this one,
but it might that may be the source of expression.
It scared the who out of him. Okay, but that's
exactly what happened to this game. He just messes himself. Now,
a thousand guests see this handwriting on the wall. Nobody
can read it, nobody understands it, nobody can interpret it.

(05:51):
So they call for this guy, Daniel, who's been serving now,
first as a prisoner war, then his interne he gets
and now he's an administrator and he's moved up. And
by this point Daniel, in his life, has developed a
reputation for being the smartest guy in the empire. He's
the best educated, he's the wisest man in the empire.

(06:12):
And he Daniel is the go to guy when you
don't know what to do, when you don't understand it,
when there's a mystery that needs to be unraveled, you
couldn't explain something, you call on Daniel. So they call
on Daniel and he comes to the banquet hall, and
Daniel reads the message and he translates it and he

(06:35):
interprets it. Now here's what the message was, Daniel five
twenty five. Now this is the message of the handwriting
on the wall, men named Minnate Tekel Parson. Well, nobody
understood that because that happens to be ara Make. It's
the only ara make phrase in the entire Hebrew Scriptures,
the Old Testament. Everything else is written in Hebrew. This

(06:57):
is the only phrase in the entire Bible, in the
Old Testament written in Aramic, which by the way, was
the language that Jesus spoke. Now he not only reads it,
he translates it, and then he Daniel interprets it and
he says, okay, King, He said, man eight means numbered,

(07:17):
and it means your days are numbered. God has numbered
the days of your reign, and they're going to end.
Your time's up. Your number has been pulled. He said,
Tikel means weighed, wade, weighed in the balance like an
a scale. He says, you've been weighed on the scales
of God and you have not measured up. And then

(07:37):
he says, parson means divided, and he says, your kingdom
is going to be divided tonight between the kings and
the Persians, and you're going to die. And the word
parson to a Hebrew mind or Chaldean mind, it's a
play on words. It's parson and Persian sound real similar.
Now this is not exactly good news in your kingdom,

(08:01):
and you're gonna die tonight. But Daniel, because he always
does the right thing, he gets promoted again. Look at
this next verse. On the screen. It says, then the
king commanded. King Belshazzar commanded that a royal road be
put on Daniel and a gold chain was put around
his neck because he had interpreted this, and the king

(08:23):
named Daniel to be the third highest ruler in the kingdom.
It's another promotion. Those of you been studying this with us
for seven weeks. Now, okay, he's the third ash ruling kingdom.
But that very night bel Shazar was slain and Darius
the Mead took over his kingdom at the age of
sixty two. Archaeology now tells us how they actually invaded.

(08:44):
They didn't try to tear the walls down. What they
did is the Euphrates river ran through the city under
the walls. They actually diverted the river and the water
went down low enough that they could crawl under the
wall and they came in. And this is a historical fact.
That the Means and the Persians then took over from

(09:07):
Belshazar that night. He only had a two year reign. Now,
there are a lot of lessons in this chapter we
could look at. I debated which way to go, like
how to not lose a kingdom. The principles are in here.
But what I want to focus on is why they
called Daniel for the crisis when they didn't know what
to do, they didn't know where to turn. There are

(09:27):
a lot of crisis in the world. We need Daniels today.
We need women and men who can go This is
what this means. This is what this means. We see
this out here, this is what this means. And as
I said, Daniel had developed this reputation as being the
go to guy because he was the wisest man in

(09:48):
the empire. In fact, let's go back and let me
show you what the Queen and the King said about
this guy here on the screen. The queen said this,
this man Daniel has a sharp mind, and he's filled
with knowledge and understanding, and he can interpret dreams. He
can explain the meaning of mysteries being solved difficult problems.

(10:09):
So call for Daniel and he'll tell you what it means.
And so they put out the call, SOS, bring Daniel in,
And when he gets into the banquet hall, this is
what the king said the next verse. I have heard
Daniel that the spirit of God is in you, that
you possess brilliant knowledge and extraordinary wisdom, that incredible reputation.

(10:32):
I mean, think about that. Note those three things. He says,
You've got God's spirit in you. You are You're brilliant
in your knowledge, and you're extraordinary in your wisdom. Wouldn't
you like to have people say that about you? Yeah, well,
if you would, you picked a good weekend to come
to church, because that's what we're going to look at.

(10:53):
How do you become wise? Like Daniel? God used this guy,
Daniel because he was wise. But wisdom is a choice,
and you can choose to become wise through learning and
through study and dedication and prayer. And the Bible's got
a lot to say about wisdom and learning. We could

(11:15):
spend an entire six months on this one, but let
me just show you one verse. Here's the verse up
here on the screen. Proverbs chapter four, which is, by
the way, the Book of Wisdom in the Bible, says
this verse thirteen, Always remember what you have learned. Your
education is your life, so guard it well. Your education

(11:36):
is your life, so guard it well.

Speaker 2 (11:51):
If you want to live a life full of purpose
and joy, then you need to transform the way you think.
And to help you do this, mister Rick created a
brand new set of scripture cards with fifty two hand
selected verses from his series Rethinking Your Life. These verses
will guide you into a deeper understanding of your purpose

(12:13):
and faith, and you'll find yourself gaining the strength to
overcome temptation and conquer discouragement. When you allow God's word
to transform your mind, you'll see your life through his eyes,
apply his wisdom, and step into a life of purpose
and joy. This set of beautifully designed cards will help

(12:33):
you memorize scripture so you can recall God's word when
you need it the most. And today, when you give
a gift to help daily hope, take the hope of
Jesus to a world in need. Will send you the
Rethinking your Life scripture card set to say thanks.

Speaker 1 (12:59):
Let's look at what God says with the five ways
to become wise in life, everybody, there's benefits to love,
there's benefits to wisdom, and when you do the things
God says to do, you're going to just become a
wiser person. All right, let's look at them. The first
thing the Bible says is this, make a commitment to
never stop learning. Make a commitment to never stop learning.

(13:24):
Now it all starts with a choice, and nobody can
decide for you. You've got to make this choice yourself.
You have to realize how important learning is for the
rest of your life. Proverbs twenty three, verse twelve, and
the Bible says this, commit yourself. That's making a commitment.
Commit yourself to instruction and tune in your ears to

(13:45):
hear the words of knowledge. Now your education. You know
this does not stop when you graduate. I've actually heard
people say, well, I'm glad I finished my education, so
now I can start my career. I want to go, buddy,
You're never gonna finish your education. Tell that one to

(14:05):
God and he'll laugh at you. The rest of your
life you're gonna be in education mode. There are a
lot of things God wants to teach you that you
have not learned yet. Learning is not a stage of life.
Learning is your life. Learning is your lifestyle. And God
wants you to learn something every day, and so he says,

(14:26):
commit yourself to instruction. Commit yourself, make a commitment you
never stop learning. What new skill are you working on
right now that you didn't have last year? What new
skill next year you're gonna work on that you don't have? Today,
are you going to be any different? You're gonna be better,
You're gonna be any stronger, You're gonna know more, You're
gonna be wiser. You make the commitment because you're never

(14:50):
finished with your education and lifelong learning is actually the
key to being a leader. All leaders are. The moment
you stop learning, you stop leading. You can never take
a person any farther than you are yourself. And so,
for instance, a church, a growing church requires a growing pastor.

(15:13):
In business, a growing business requires a growing businessman. In
the classroom, it requires a growing teacher. In any area
of life, all leaders are learners. If you're not learning,
you're not a leader because you've got to keep moving
further and further ahead. As I said, it's not a stage. Now,
why should you never stop learning? Because it's in your

(15:36):
best interest. I could give you forty fifty things that
the Bible says learning does in your life. Let me
just mention a couple. It brings success, and it brings profit.
Success and profit. You want those in your life, then
you need to be a continuous learning person. The more
you learn, the more you earn, the more you grow,
the more you become effective in life. Let me show

(15:58):
you a couple verses. One of them is he's asked,
he's nineteen ten ten. This is one of my life versus.
I memorized it early in life, and it says this,
If an axe is dull and its edges unsharpened, more
strength is needed. But skill will bring success. Now it says,
if you've got to axe and you're chopping wood, if
the if the blade is dull, obviously it takes a

(16:21):
lot more energy to chop the wood. If it's if
your axe is sharp, which represents skill, then then it
doesn't take as much effort. He's simply saying, here, work smarter,
not harder. Work smarter, not harder. You're never wasting your time.
When you're sharpening your axe. Right now, when you come
to church, you're sharpening your axs. You're spiritually sharpening your

(16:44):
axe to be more effective in the world. When you
take a seminar, when you read a book, you're sharpening
your axe. And the Bible says that skill will bring success.
Notice it didn't say desire, it didn't say it didn't
say okay. It says skill will bring success. And you

(17:05):
can pray all you want, and you can have all
the desire all you want, and you can write down
all your dreams all you want, but if you don't
have the skill, you're not going to be as successful
as you could be. I know a lot of people
have who desire to be a success. They desire to grow,
they desire to be effective, they desire, but they're not
willing to learn the skills. Go back to school and

(17:28):
get a new skill or whatever skill the Bible says
will bring success. And not only that, the Bible says
it brings profit. Look at this verse on your screen.
The Bible says in Proverbs nineteen, verse eight, do yourself
a favor. Let me see it's self serving really to
grow in wisdom. Do yourself a favor and learn all
you can. Then remember what you learn, and you will

(17:50):
what prosper. Okay, you'll have a better life if you
the more you learn, you'll just have a better life.
Now here's what I've done discovered. I've talked to tens
of thousands of people in one hundred and sixty four countries,
and what I've learned is this, you can learn from
anybody if you know the right question. I could if

(18:13):
you give me five minutes with you, I can get
you to teach me something because you know things I
don't know. I know some things you don't know, and
the person sitting next to you knows some things that
neither you nor I know. That's why we need each other.
That's why it takes humility to be wise. Humility asks questions.
Pride says, oh, I don't want ask question because it

(18:34):
look like I'm dumb. There are no dumb questions in life.
The dumb thing is not to ask a question. And
so in humility, you'll actually learn more because you ask questions.
His verse in the Bible, it says, counsel in the
heart of man is like a deep well, but a
man of understanding will draw it out. Daniel was a
man of understanding. How do you draw it out of

(18:55):
people by asking questions? You might want to sit down
and make a little list and keep it in your
way your purse. Every time you sit around with somebody
who you think maybe they could teach me something, take
advantage of it. Whenever I meet a stranger and I've
got a period of time I'm sitting on a plane
with them or whatever happen to be waiting, and we

(19:15):
start talking, I have two questions on back of my mind.
One of the first is how can I help them?
How can I serve them? Is there anything I could do?
Maybe they need an encouragement. Is there anything I could
assist them in? Because we're here to serve. And then
the second question is what do they know that I
don't know? And I'll start asking a few questions, probe, probing,
and I go, well, I don't know anything about that,

(19:36):
and I'll ask about it. And that way anybody can
teach you something. But the secret is you have to
pay attention. Look at this verse on the screen, Proverbs
twenty three to twelve. Pay attention to your teacher and learn.
All you can point is pay attention. And if the
more you pay attention, that's part of the commitment to

(19:57):
never stop learning. All right, here's the second key that
the Bible tells us to be wise. Learn the lessons
of the prior generation. Learn the lessons of the prior generation.
And the whole reason I wanted to talk about this
is because this was the mistake that this king Belshazer made.
He could have learned the lessons that would have prevented

(20:19):
his kingdom from being overthrown because his grandfather had made
all these mistakes, but he didn't listen, he didn't learn,
and as a result, he lost it all. You learned
the lessons of the prior generation. Actually, this concept is
something that God commands us to do. Let me give
you an example of it in the Bible, in the
Book of Job, chapter eight, verse eight, verse nine, it

(20:42):
says this, ask the former generations and find out what
their fathers learned. For we were born only yesterday and
we know so little. He says, I want you to
go out and ask the former generations. You need to
learn the lessons of people who came before you, he said.
If you don't, you're being prideful. If you're humble, you

(21:05):
will learn. Now what does that mean in your life?
If you're going to be wise, you're going to need
four kinds of people. I want you to write these down.
There are four relationships you need to become wise. You
need mentors, models, partners, and friends. This is not on
your outline. Just write it down in the corner. Mentors, models, partners,
and friends. If you're going to be all that God

(21:25):
wants you to be in life, if you're going to
succeed the way God intends for you to succeed, you're
going to need mentors, models, partners, and friends, and these
will help you from lessons from the past. First you
need mentors. Now. Mentors are your coaches. They're the people
who help you along in life. In my life, I've

(21:48):
had nine different mentors. Why because nobody can teach you everything,
So you don't need one mentor for your life. You
need somebody who teaches you this. You need somebody else
over here who teaches you this, and somebody else who
teach over this and this. Nine mentors in my life.
Only one of them still living. His name's Billy Graham.
Then he's ninety six. Some of my mentors were famous,

(22:09):
but some of them were just normal. You would never
even know who they were. Probably the most famous mentor
I had was Peter Drucker. Peter Druckcker was the father
of modern management, pretty much invented the modern corporation, and
for the last twenty years of his life, I would
go to his home and he mentored me from age

(22:29):
seventy five to ninety five and died at ninety six,
and taught me stuff that I didn't know about. How
do you organize a very large you know, complex system.
So you need mentors in your life. Second thing you
need is you need models. Now models are they're already
doing what you want to do with your life. We

(22:52):
learn fastest by model everything. You learned, all these skills
in your life by other people modeling it for you,
like how to talk. So you need models in your life.
I want to recommend, if you're going to have a
model for your life, that they be dead, and say why,
because the jury is still out on people who are alive.

(23:13):
The jury's still out on me, on you and everybody else.
And some people start off well, but they don't end well.
And so you might want to choose a model from
history because then you can see their life from beginning
to end. You can see the arcs in the ups
and the downs, highs and those the problems and the pitfalls.
But you don't want to choose as a model somebody

(23:34):
who you think, Wow, that's my model, and a few
years from now they really crack up and burn out.
And you've bring climbing this ladder of success and you
get to the top and you realize it's leaning against
the wrong wall. So you need mentors, you need models.
I would have live mentors dead models. Then you need partners.
Partners are the people in your life who row the

(23:55):
boat with you. They're your coworkers in your profession. And
partners can help you and challenge you, can support you.
Everybody needs partners. And then of course you need friends.
Now friends aren't helping you with your goal. They're just friends.
And friends love you no matter what you do. You
can really mess up, and they love you. They say, hey,

(24:16):
you're a good egg, even if you are a little cracked.
And friends, what is a friend? A friend walks into
your life when everybody else walks out, Then you know
who your friends are. You know they're there when you
need them the most, when you don't deserve a friend.
But you need to have in your life always somebody

(24:36):
you're building into and somebody who's building into you. You
need a mentor. You need a pall, and you need
a mentee, you need a timothy everybody. You need to
have somebody who's pouring into your life, and you need
somebody you're pouring into their life. And usually they are
older and younger. But you need to learn the lessons
of the prior generation. Now, it says, ask the former generation,

(24:58):
how do you ask them if they're dead. Well, biographies
read biographies. I tell my staff here at Saddlebachschurtch, I
have five hundred and thirteen staff, paid staff, and I'm
telling them all the time. I'm telling them all the time.
All the lessons are in the past and all of
the opportunities are in the future.

Speaker 2 (25:31):
If you want to live a life full of purpose
and joy, then you need to transform the way you think.
And to help you do this, Pastor Rick created a
brand new set of scripture cards with fifty two hand
selected verses from his series Rethinking your Life. These verses
will guide you into a deeper understanding of your purpose

(25:53):
and faith, and you'll find yourself gaining the strength to
overcome temptation and conquer discouragement. When you allow God's word
to transform your mind, You'll see your life through his eyes,
apply his wisdom, and step into a life of purpose
and joy. This set of beautifully designed cards will help

(26:13):
you memorize scripture so you can recall God's word when
you need it the most. And today, when you give
a gift to help daily hope, take the hope of
Jesus to a world in need, will send you the
rethinking your life. Scripture card set to say thanks,