Sermon Tone Analysis

The Journey to Integrity

 

Psalm 26

June 25

*/Focus:/* The road to integrity is long, hard and immensely rewarding.

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/ /

A new preacher went to visit a well-known member of the congregation.

Somebody was obviously at home, but nobody came to the door.

The preacher took out his calling card, wrote on the back "Revelation 3:20," and left it in the mailbox.

The next Sunday, he found the parishioner's busi­ness card in the collection plate, with the notation "Genesis 3:10."

Revelation 3:20: "Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: If any man hear my voice, and opens the door, I will come in to him, and will dine with him, and he with me."

Genesis 3:10: "And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself."

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*Introduction: Integrity Is Tough*

If I had just one gift to give you, I think it would be the gift of integrity—such a gift that when you come to the last chapter of your story, you could have the inspired chutzpah of Psalm 26 and say to God, eyeball to eyeball, “Vindicate me, because I have walked in my integrity.”

What a way to go! So, let’s read today’s Scripture now.

Please turn with me to Psalm 26 and follow along as I read: /“Declare me innocent, O LORD, for I have acted with integrity; I have trusted in the LORD without wavering.

\\ Put me on trial, LORD, and cross-examine me.

Test my motives and affections.

\\ For I am constantly aware of your unfailing love, and I have lived according to your truth.

\\ I do not spend time with liars or go along with hypocrites.

\\ I hate the gatherings of those who do evil, and I refuse to join in with the wicked.

\\ I wash my hands to declare my innocence.

I come to your altar, O LORD, \\ singing a song of thanksgiving and telling of all your miracles.

\\ I love your sanctuary, LORD, the place where your glory shines.

\\ Don't let me suffer the fate of sinners.

Don't condemn me along with murderers.

\\ Their hands are dirty with wicked schemes, and they constantly take bribes.

\\ But I am not like that; I do what is right.

So in your mercy, save me.

\\ I have taken a stand, and I will publicly praise the LORD”.

/

 

When Dietrich Bonhoeffer was almost hearing the stomping of the Gestapo boots to take him away and execute him, he wondered on paper what kind of people the church was going to need most when the last bomb had exploded and the last person had been killed.

He said this: “What the church will need, what our century will need, are not people of genius, not brilliant tacticians or strategists, but simple, straightforward, honest men and women.”

Bonhoeffer, we need you now.

What a gift!

People of integrity are people who adhere to a strict code of values.

They are honest, open, and sincere.

We may have our Presbyterian panache or our charismatic chic and we may build empires, but if we don’t have integrity, we’re moral cadavers.

They haven’t buried us yet, but we’re walking dead people.

If I had the gift, I’d give you the gift of integrity.

But I can’t give it to you.

This is not a gift that zaps us in the night; this is a gift we have to work at all of our lives as we co-author our stories with God.

And it comes very hard.

u I was watching an interview show on television some years ago in which a beautiful, dignified British lady in her eighties appeared as though she had just come from tea at Buckingham Palace—a woman who could have done anything.

The parting question she was asked was this: “What has been the hardest thing for you to do in your life?”

She said, “Be honest.”

I felt an instant rapport with this wonderful lady.

“How can a so-called saint admit that it’s hard to be honest?”

My reply was, “It’s hardest of all for us.

There are so many people to please, so many powerful reasons why we should make believe that we are what we appear to be, or pretend to be what we think other people expect us to be—to fake it, to gloss it, to make believe instead of make true.

It’s tough to walk in our integrity.”

Scripture says we are not to think too highly of ourselves.

Romans 12:3 says/:” As God's messenger, I give each of you this warning: Be honest in your estimate of yourselves, measuring your value by how much faith God has given you”./

Have you ever noticed, it never scolds us for thinking too lowly of ourselves.

1 Corinthians 10:12 says : /“If you think you are standing strong, be careful, for you, too, may fall into the same sin.“

/It is easier to slip on your tongue than a sheet of northern ice.

It is difficult to humble yourself before our God as James tells us in Chapter 4, verse 7: /“So humble yourselves before God.

Resist the Devil, and he will flee from you”./ Gary Thuveson, District Superintendent in B.C., told us at our District Conference to be HOT communicators – that is honest, open, and transparent.

The American justice system requires you to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Being completely honest is what integrity is all about.

That means not fibbing or telling little white lies or even kidding.

A lie by any other name is still a lie.

Talking truth is challenging but walking truth is even more difficult.

And we’re talking about walking; we’re not talking about talking.

We’re not talking about speaking the truth; we’re talking about living truth fully.

We’re not talking about having the truth the way you can have a genetic code or have a hundred shares of IBM; we’re talking about living truthfully.

Like a baseball game, the story of our integrity isn’t over until it’s over.

Integrity isn’t a possession that we have once and for all.

Integrity is a calling.

We’re on a journey to integrity.

I’d like to suggest a few stages that we’ve got to go through on our private journeys to our own integrity.

There are more, but consider these.

*I.

Accept the Raw Material God Gave You*

I think the first thing that we have to do is to accept the raw material that God has given us to write our stories.

Every one of us has to write a story—his own, her own, story.

I cannot write yours; I cannot write my children’s (though God knows I’ve tried sometimes).

I can write only mine, and you can write only yours.

And each of us is given by God in his providence some raw material out of which we have to write our story—the way a poker player is dealt a hand with which he has to play the game, though God knows he wishes his hand had been better

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 One of the hardest things for some of us to do is to accept the hand God gave us.

It is so hard.

One of the most powerful stories that I have read in recent years was a book titled /Racehoss: Big Emma’s Boy/.

Here was a man who was born the son of a black prostitute in a little town in Texas, and the son of a white traveling salesman.

Big Emma, his mother, was a prostitute, a gambler, and a bootlegger, and she did a good business near one of the railroad stop.

But when Big Emma was drunk, she was brutal, very brutal.

Albert Sample lasted it out until he was 11 years old then he left home and became a hobo and rode the tracks.

He says the one thing that was true about hobo life in America in the thirties was violence.

Violence became his being.

He was caught and drafted into the Army.

They couldn’t hold him there; he was constantly going AWOL, and every time he went AWOL he would be arrested for assault and battery.

Violence was his being.

He was sentenced to the toughest prison in Texas for twenty-eight years, and after serving some seventeen years, he had learned the truth that if you treat people like animals, they become animals.

One time for a minor infraction he was put into a dungeon—solitary confinement, no light.

He stayed there for fourteen days, and he thought he heard water running down the walls and became terrified that he was going to drown in his own dungeon.

He fell on the floor and beat the cement with his fists and yelled, “Help me!

Help me!”

A voice came, and the voice said, “You’re not an animal.

You’re a person.

You’re not an animal; you’re a person.”

A light shone with a softness, he says, that was the softness of God.

In thirty seconds, he says, all the violence of his being was drained from his body.

He said to the voice, “What shall I say?”

The voice said, “Tell ‘em you met Me here.”