Necessary Roughness

Pastor Schroeder gave this sermon on June 18. Thankfully my wife recorded it; I was downstairs with the children. “Wanted: People of Integrity” was based on Psalm 25:21.

(recording starts)
…as we know, he was a dedicated man of God who is one of the most admired men in America. He has stated specifically what he wants to be remembered for. He has said, “I do not want to be remembered as a great preacher.” He said, “I do not want to be remembered as a great evangelist. I don’t want to be remembered at all for the many evangelistic crusades I have done all around the world. There’s one thing that I want to be remembered for: I want people to remember me as a man of integrity.”

Well, Billy Graham’s wish is very much in line with a prayer from King David in our Psalm for today, because David was praying for protection. He prayed that he might be protected, not by a suit of metal armor. In fact, if you recall that when David went out and faced the giant Goliath, he refused to wear the smallest of armor. He didn’t want any metal armor at all. David prayed that he might be protected not by a suit of metal armor, but by the invisible armor of integrity. “May integrity and uprightness protect me, because my hope is in you.” (NIV)

Billy Graham’s wish and David’s prayer are certainly appropriate for all of us, and on this Father’s Day, I would like to especially invite the men, the husbands, and the fathers of the congregation to endorse this, to acclaim this, to make this wish and prayer your own. May we be remembered above all for our integrity. May integrity and uprightness protect us, because our hope is in the Lord.

Well, what is integrity? The basic idea of integrity is the idea of wholeness, of being complete or undivided. The word “integrity” is related to the word “integer,” and an integer is a whole number. It is not a broken number, not a fraction, like 17/43. It’s a whole thing. So the opposite of integrity is the character of being divided or compromised or inconsistent. For example it’s praising God’s name on Sunday and taking God’s name on Monday in vain. It is putting on an appearance that your life is full of good and yet harboring evil in your heart. It’s being Mr. Nice Guy around the neighborhood, helpful to everyone, but a lazy bum at home. It’s putting on a public appearance as a man of God and yet living in private like a child of the devil. You see, the inconsistency, the brokenness, that represents a lack of integrity. Integrity, on the other hand, is loving the Lord with your whole heart, not just a portion, but the whole thing. It is serving the lord with your whole life, not just a fraction, but your whole life. It is being totally, completely devoted and loyal to the Lord.

Throughout scripture there are a number of people who are specifically noted for their integrity. I would like to look at several of those people with you today, because they are people who can help us flesh out the concept of what it means to have integrity in our daily life. One of them, it doesn’t surprise you, is our lord Jesus. He is of course the greatest example of integrity in all of scripture. Jesus was completely undivided or uncompromised. He was wholly devoted to his father. He was wholly devoted to doing his father’s will, and that integrity was something that was noticed even by Jesus’ enemies. As we are told in Mark, Chapter 12, at verse 13:

Later they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to Jesus to catch him in his words. They came to him and said, “Teacher, we know you are a man of integrity. You aren’t swayed by men, because you pay no attention to who they are; but you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth.

These were enemies of Jesus who had been watching him, who had been looking for opportunities to somehow trap him in his words. One thing that they could not help in observing was that he was a man of integrity, and his integrity was reflected in his speech. He didn’t say one thing to cater to one audience and then change his tune to cater to another audience, but he taught the word of God, the way of God, in accordance with the truth.

For you and me also, integrity means speaking the truth no matter what people want to hear. It is speaking the truth in love without bending it or compromising it in any way. For example, when we gather together for worship, it is easy for us as the people of God to stand up and publicly confess our faith in God, proudly confess our faith in God:

I believe in God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth.
And I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord…
And I believe in the Holy Spirit and the holy Christian church, the communion of saints, and the forgiveness of sins,
I believe of the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting, Amen!

It’s easy to make that kind of confession when we are gathered together with our fellow believers, but when we are in a crowd of unbelievers, you and I know, it’s easy to keep quiet about those things, to hold back on our confession and act if God wasn’t such an important part of life. If, brothers and sisters, we learn to confess God publicly before unbelievers even as we do before our fellow believers, to stand up and say, “I believe that God is in control of the world, and I believe that there is a God who loves me and he loves you too, and I believe that Jesus Christ has redeemed us all.” If we make such a confession boldly and proudly before unbelievers as before our fellow believers, why, that is integrity.

Here is another example of integrity in our speech. You know that in speech today probably one of the most important things is political correctness. Say anything you want, as long as you don’t offend someone, as long as you don’t step on anyone’s toes. My brothers and sisters, integrity values honesty far more than it values political correctness. So if your friend is talking to you and indicates that she is considering having an abortion, well, it may not be politically correct to do so, but it is integrity if you respond by talking about the sanctity of human life. If your buddy loves to boast on Monday morning about his wild drinking exploits every weekend, it may not be politically correct to do so, but it is integrity if you say, “You know, I’ll tell you that drunkenness is a sin. You are hurting your own body, the body that God has given you.”

If our fellow members are absent from worship week after week, and we go and speak to them, and say, “You know, I miss you, and God misses you, too, because he has commanded us to come and worship faithfully,” that may not be politically correct, but it is integrity. The point is, don’t change your message in order to suit your audience. Don’t tone down your message in order that you may not offend someone, but do as Jesus did. Speak the truth in love, without bending it or compromising it in any way. That is integrity.

Here’s another example of integrity in the Bible. This is a man by the name of Hanani. Hanani is identified as a brother of Nehemiah back in the Old Testament. Nehemiah speaks about Hanani in Nehemiah 7:2. Nehemiah says this:

I put in charge of Jerusalem my brother Hanani…because he was a man of integrity and feared God more than most men do.

What a description of this man Hanani! He was a man of integrity who feared God more than most men do. He was utterly devoted to the will of God. He was utterly devoted to honoring God, and the fear of God in his heart carried over into the way he lived his life. Because he was a man of integrity who feared God more than most men do, Hanani did an extraordinary thing. He traveled all the way from Jerusalem. He was living in Jerusalem. It had been destroyed by the Babylonians. It was nothing but rubble and ruins. He traveled from Jerusalem all the way over into Babylon, the capital city of Susa in order that he might have a meeting with Nehemiah, in order that he might arrange for the rebuilding of the walls and city of Jerusalem.

Hanani illustrates another important aspect of integrity. Integrity means faith in action. The faith that is in our heart ends up being expressed seamlessly with the way we live our life. This is an important lesson for all Christians. It may be an especially important lesson for Lutheran Christians, because sometimes Lutheran Christians seem to think the only thing that counts is that I believe. You see, this is part of our Lutheran heritage. We are saved by faith, not by our works, and so we begin to think that the only thing that counts is that I believe and what I do has nothing to do with what I believe. The Bible in fact teaches that that is not the case. In fact, what we believe must be expressed in what we do. There is to be this seamless connection between the faith in our heart and the actions of our lives. That is wholeness. That is completeness. That is integrity. Let me ask you, brothers and sisters, do your actions reflect integrity?

You know, when we have been richly blessed by the Lord with material blessings and in our hearts we say, “Thank you, Lord,” and then we share those blessings gladly with others, when we give generously for hurricane relief or tsunami relief, when we come to the aid of a brother or sister who is going through a time of crisis, when we dig into our wallets and dig into our cupboards in order to provide meals for the men of Faith Mission, that is putting our faith into action, and that is integrity. When we come to church and we hear the Word on Sunday morning, and then live that Word Monday through Saturday with a life of obedience, a life of prayer, a life of humble service to others, that is integrity. When we put the words of the Lord’s Great Commission on the church window:

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you,

when we put the words of our Lord’s Great Commission on the church window and then put them into practice when we go out of the church because we are reaching out to others with the love of Christ as we have the opportunity, because we are speaking about the love of Christ, about his cross and his empty tomb whenever we have the opportunity, my brothers and sisters, that is integrity: putting our faith into practice day by day. So don’t pat yourself on the back because you have the right faith. Make certain that you are putting your faith into action day by day, that your faith is transforming your life. May we be like Hanani, men and women of integrity who fear the Lord from our heart and serve him with all our love.

There is one final example that I want to share with you of a man with integrity in the scripture, and that man’s name is Job. You know, most people acknowledge Job as a man of great patience, but above that the Bible acknowledges Job as a man of integrity. In fact, the Lord himself called Job a man of integrity. After Satan assaulted Job, and he lost his family and all his possessions, Satan came and paraded before the Lord. It’s in Job, chapter 2:

Then the LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil. And he still maintains his integrity, though you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason.”

Later on Job’s friends came, consulted with him, and advised him. They were all worried about these problems and troubles that he was going through. They were saying, “Job, why has this happened to you? You must have done something wrong, or God is a bad god to do this to you,” and Job would not compromise his integrity. He continued to hold to his convictions, as he says in chapter 27:

And Job continued his discourse:

“As surely as God lives, who has denied me justice,
the Almighty, who has made me taste bitterness of soul,

as long as I have life within me,
the breath of God in my nostrils,

my lips will not speak wickedness,
and my tongue will utter no deceit.

I will never admit you are in the right;
till I die, I will not deny my integrity.

I will maintain my righteousness and never let go of it;

Job illustrates another aspect of integrity. Integrity means standing firm when our faith is under fire. It means standing firm in times of trial and testing. It means hanging on to our convictions firmly based on the Word of God, no matter how hard those convictions are assaulted. It means walking with God day by day, when the walking is easy and when the walking is tough as well. Let me ask you, my brothers and sisters, do you maintain your integrity in times of testing, in times of trial?

The teacher said to his class, “I want you to write a paper explaining how the Big Bang resulted in the universe,” and the student turned in a paper that began with this sentence: “I believe that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” My brothers and sisters, that’s integrity. That is expressing and hanging on to your faith under fire.

A man came to visit his friend who was dying, and the man said to his friend, “I don’t understand why God is doing this to you. You served him all your life, and now he is making you suffer. What a terrible god you worship!”

That friend responded by saying, “God has blessed me with more blessings than I deserve all my life long, and he is with me even now, and I believe that for Jesus’ sake he’s going to lead me through the valley of the shadow of death to eternal life.” My brothers and sisters, that is integrity.

Potiphar’s wife said to Joseph, “Come lie with me. We’ll have a good time together. Potiphar will never know, and I will reward you richly. Go ahead and do what you know to be wrong, because you’ll have fun doing it,” and Joseph responded, “How can I do such a great wickedness and sin against God?” My brothers and sisters, that is integrity.

Wanted: men, husbands, fathers, women, people of integrity. People like Job, whose faith stands firm under fire. People like Hanani, whose faith in our heart is expressed in our daily life as we walk day by day with God. People like Jesus who do not compromise the truth but speak the truth in love no matter what people want to hear without bending it or compromising it in any way. All of this is all the more important because integrity is in extremely short supply in our world today.

You know, it is so easy to carry on with the idea, I can serve God and keep on serving Satan on the side. I can serve God and keep on living a life of sin on the side. I can serve God 60%, give him 30%, give him 10%, but I certainly don’t need to give him my all. Let me ask you, do you want to be a person of integrity? The fact is, you will never be whole—listen to this—you will never be whole until you recognize that you are utterly broken. The fact is, Satan has been messing around and sin has been messing around in your life and in my life big time so that the image of God in me and in you has been twisted and distorted. It has been completely shattered, and the only way we can ever be made whole is through Jesus.

There is only one answer to our brokenness: his name is Jesus. He is the only who is complete and whole. He is the only man of perfect integrity. Brothers and sisters, when you and I in our brokenness come to Jesus in faith, when we trust in him as our savior, when we honor him as our Lord, when we follow him as our guide, when we lean on him as our life and strength, his wholeness becomes ours. Miraculously, he takes the broken pieces of our life and begins to put them together again. The Bible says he makes us new. He makes the broken whole, and what a blessing that is! What a great blessing for us, what a great blessing for others that will continue! What a great blessing for us to be remembered by and for, that in Christ, we are whole people, and so may that be our prayer. May that be the prayer of all of you men, in particular this Father’s Day. Lord Jesus, make us to be like you. Make us, like you, to be men and women of integrity. Amen.