Men and Women of Integrity

Psalm 101. I said last week we were going to

do the whole psalm, and we made it through one

verse. So I'm not going to say we'll do the whole

psalm tonight. We won't. But we might finish

it at some point. Psalm 101. We'll read verse

1 and verse 2, and then we'll pray. I will sing

of faithful love and justice. I will sing praise

to you, Lord. I will pay attention to the way

of integrity. When will you come to me? I will

live with a heart of integrity in my house. Let's

pray. God, we come to you. We thank you for your

good word. And I pray, dear Lord, that you would

help us to be men and women of integrity. that

we would have the same heart as David here, that

we would seek you, that we would long for you,

that we would desire to walk for you and not

walk in the ways of the world. I pray that your

Holy Spirit would be among us tonight, God. I

pray that these couple of little verses we look

at would just, we'd get something from them.

We'd grow in you. I pray, God, that you would

hide me behind the cross, dear Lord, that I would

preach and teach in a way that brings glory and

honor to you tonight. And I ask these things

in Jesus' name. Amen. We see that this psalm,

we talked about it a little bit last week in

this first verse. This is a praise to the Lord.

David here is praising God. He's praising God

for his faithful love, for his justice. We talked

about what those things meant last week. We won't

go back into that again. But really when we get

to verse 2, we begin to see kind of what the

main theme of Psalm 101 is. And that is integrity.

What does David say? He says, I will pay attention

to the way of integrity. He says it again at

the end of the verse. I will live with a heart

of integrity in my house. What does it mean to

be a man or a woman of integrity? Well, integrity

is doing the right thing. It's doing the right

thing. But maybe a better definition of integrity

is doing the right thing when nobody's looking.

That's really what integrity is because we'll

all do the right thing when somebody's looking,

right? Somebody's looking and you know what you're

supposed to do, you're probably going to do it.

But what do you do behind closed doors when nobody's

watching? Say it's your job if you still work

or maybe in the past. When the boss is there,

it seems like people work a little harder than

when he's not there. When the boss is not there,

people may lollygag, people may take a few more

breaks, but when the boss comes in, guess what?

Things change. Everybody sits up straight in

their chair, and the breaks cut down, and the

bathroom breaks cut down, and the work increases

a little bit, right? And that's kind of what

we are tempted to do, and if we're honest, we've

probably all done that some in our work. We kind

of slack. But integrity is doing the right thing

even when nobody's watching. Now, we can sit

in this room tonight. We're going to do the right

thing. Ain't none of us going to say nothing

off the wall, say nothing crazy. Everything's

going to be good. We're not going to be looking

at nothing that's inappropriate on our phones.

But what are we going to do tonight when we go

home when nobody's watching? What are we going

to say? What kind of mouths are going to, I mean,

words are going to come from our mouth? What

kind of things are we going to be? Bringing in

to our body, are our eyes going to see, are our

ears going to hear? What kind of thoughts are

going to run through our mind? Oh, we got a good

attitude here. We smile. Everything's good. How

you doing, brother? Good to see y 'all. I hope

you're having a good night. But then, does our

attitude change when we leave? If we're a man

or a woman of integrity, we'll be the same when

nobody's looking as we are when people are looking.

And that's what David desires to be. He desires

to be a man of integrity. A man who says, I have

done the right thing. That should be our desire.

That when we get to the end of the day every

day, that we can look back at our day without

any regrets. That we can know that we've done

the right thing. That we've done what we're supposed

to do. And here's some cool thing about it right

here. When we do what we're supposed to do, we'll

sleep a lot better at night. Some people have

trouble sleeping at night. Me too sometimes.

And sometimes I wonder maybe the reason why I

have trouble sleeping is maybe because of something

I've done or hadn't done. Sometimes there's stuff

going on in our life that's not right and we

don't have any rest in our soul because we haven't

been men and women of integrity. But David desires

to be that here. He's praising the Lord. He says,

God, I praise your faithful love. I praise your

justice. God, I rejoice in you. and I desire

to be a man of integrity for you, Lord, not just

for me, but for all in my house, so that I'd

be a man of integrity, and that my wife would

see that, and that my children would see that,

and that my friends would see that, and that

my community would see that, and that his whole

kingdom that he was king of would see that he

was a man of integrity. Now, he had the desire

to be a man of integrity, but sadly, he was not

always a man of integrity. It'd be great if we

looked through the pages of Scripture and David

was what he wanted to be, but he wasn't. There's

plenty of times where David did not do the right

thing, and neither do we. We may genuinely have

that desire to be a man or a woman of integrity,

but sometimes we fail, and perhaps we need to

echo David's words here in the middle of verse

2. When will you come to me? Lord, I need you.

Lord, when will you come to me? God, I want to

be a man of integrity. I want to be a woman of

integrity. God, I need your help to do that.

And that's our desire and that should be what

we strive for. But we also know that we fail.

But praise the Lord, there was a better king

that was coming. Now David started a kingship

way back when he was appointed king. And guess

who was eventually going to come through the

line of David? It was going to be Jesus Christ,

the King of kings and the Lord of lords. One

who could be a man of perfect integrity. So praise

God. We seek to live for Him. We seek to do what

is right. And sometimes we fail. And that's not

an excuse. We shouldn't just say, oh, I failed.

It's okay, you know. No, we're going to fail,

but we should never be okay with that. Our sin

and our failures, they bring about some burden

on us. But praise the Lord, Jesus Christ can

take that burden. That even though that we fail,

Jesus Christ never did. And so we need to seek

in our life to be men and women of integrity.

We want to do the right thing. You might have

had some opportunities today to do the right

thing and you didn't do it. You're probably going

to have some opportunities tomorrow to do the

right thing. Are you going to do it? Are you

going to do what God wants you to do? Are you

going to do what's right or are you going to

slack? Got the opportunity in front of all of

these people, man and woman of integrity. What

about when you leave this place? If you just

do the right thing when people are watching,

you are not a man or a woman of integrity. You

are a hypocrite. Jesus talks about this very

idea at the end of Matthew chapter 24. He talks

Matthew 24 · chapter mention

about those who were supposed to be doing the

master's work, and the master delayed his coming.

And so instead of being diligent, and when the

master would find the worker at work, instead

the worker was out living for himself. And then

the master comes back, and what's happening?

The worker... is not being a man of integrity.

And Jesus says, you are a hypocrite. So what

about us? Are we doing the Lord's work? The Lord's

always watching. I don't see what you do. You

don't see what I do. But the Lord sees what all

of us do. And we need to remember that. And that

needs to be what drives us to Do what is right

in our life. And the choices we make and the

things we do and the way that we treat people,

we need to do it with integrity. Let's pray.

God, we thank you for this simple word, but a

powerful command it is to us, dear Lord, and

help us to look at our own life because maybe

there are some areas in our life where we have

not been men and women of integrity. Maybe...

Maybe we are hypocritical in some way, dear Lord.

Maybe we look good when we come up here, but

maybe behind closed doors we know our life is

a wreck and we need to change the way we act,

change the way we treat others, change the way

we speak, change the things that we look at,

change the things that we do. Help us to be those

who do what is right, dear Lord, that we would

seek your word to know what is right. Your Holy

Spirit would lead us, that we would follow those

convictions of the Holy Spirit, God. We know

we fail, and we don't want to fail. But I pray

that you help us to have that desire to do what

is right. And we pray that you'd give us grace

when we fail and strengthen us to help us grow

in those times through Jesus Christ. We thank

you that he was a man of perfect integrity, and

so it is him we seek now. And I ask these things

in Jesus' name. Amen.