Are You a Person of Integrity?

Thank you, Mr. Miller, for the beautiful special music. I forgot to ask during the announcements, is it as cold as it was in here last week today, or is it improved? It's improved. It's still a little chilly, but it's definitely better than it was last week. Okay, that's kind of the way I was feeling too, but I also don't process heat and cold in quite the same as some. Carl Kester can tell you that. When we went to Ghana, I kept my room at 16 degrees Celsius with the air conditioner, which is about 53 degrees Celsius. Maybe 63 degrees Celsius somewhere in there. It's cold. Carl slept in a hat and coat and everything else, and I was loving every bit of it. I don't process cold in quite the same ways that some do, but I want to make sure that everybody's comfortable.

In the early 1950s, Don Richardson, who was a Canadian missionary, was sent to Papua New Guinea to bring Christianity to the tribal peoples of Indonesia. At that point, this particular part of Indonesia was completely untouched by the modern world and unevangelized at that point in time.

Mr. Richardson would be making first contact with the peoples in this area, working to learn their language and attempting to translate the scriptures into a form that they could understand in his attempt to preach the gospel to the peoples of Indonesia. The people in the area, despite what we might consider and term primitive in comparison to Western culture, were certainly not unintelligent. They had established culture, they had rituals, they had an incredibly complex social and political hierarchy. Now, the part of New Guinea in which he settled was Western New Guinea, and he settled among a tribe of people known as the Sa'wi, a group of people known as the Sa'wi, and they were one of many tribes of cannibalistic headhunters in the area. Think, wait a minute, how did I pull the short straw on this one? But he went, you know, willingly, not just him, his wife and his children as well. He and his wife and child were viewed by the Sa'wi people with curiosity, with wonder, with amazement. He was referred to as a twan, which is a white person, similar to what we would refer to, and we'd be called an obruini or an oebo in Nigeria or Ghana, a white person, just a matter-of-fact statement. But Don and his family were viewed as something more than human by the Sa'wi people. They weren't viewed as spirit, there was a differentiation in their minds, but they were viewed as something more than human. More than human because rumors had come to the Sa'wi from other tribes who had integration with white people at that point in time that the twan could shoot fire. They had guns.

They brought tools and things that allowed them to do the work ten times faster, where they'd bring these metal axes that could cut trees down with four quick strokes instead of the 40 that it would take with a stone axe. But they were viewed as something more than human in a way. And the Sa'wi were curious to see what else they could do, which, frankly, that almost legendary status, assisted Don and his family in being accepted by the tribe. And so he was accepted, but that acceptance didn't change the fact that the Sa'wi were a group of cannibals.

Up until the point of 1950, they were still cannibalistic. And they had a long-standing war with a number of the tribes that were around them. And in many ways, in the Sa'wi tribe, violence was simply a way of life. It was just what you do. When they arrived, Don observed that there were very few elders in the tribe. There were very few people with gray hair in the tribe.

And the reason for that was because, between the wars and the disease and the rigors of life in the jungle, their life expectancy was quite low. Three groups of semi-closely related tribes of people settled around the Richardson family, which, as you might imagine, came complete with the tension and stress of being surrounded by three rival headhunting groups. And maybe a wonder of, are we going to make it through this? His wife served as a doctor for the tribe, providing them with needed medical attention. And Don began to settle into learning a language and trying to understand some of the social complexities that were involved with this. As time went on, he observed, much to his dismay, that the foundation of the culture of the Sa'wi people was treachery and deceit.

Their entire culture, their entire society, was founded on deceit and treachery.

In fact, the most honored deed among the Sa'wi people was to befriend a member of a rival tribe, stringing them along, and when he least expected it, betray him and kill him.

And when you did that, you achieved a certain degree of status you'd be referred to as a legend maker. You achieved honor and status by doing one of the most despicable deeds that you could do to another human being. They became a hero in the eyes of the tribe, and that particular action again elevated them in society, in the culture itself, giving them actual leadership opportunities within the tribe. The entire culture was built on deceit. That was the primary foundation of the culture, and after some time of learning the language, he started to pick it up and he started to share stories from Scripture and broken Sa'wi, most of which, frankly, he said, over and over, bored the Sa'wi to tears. They'd fall asleep on him as he had them gathered around trying to tell him different stories about the Gospels and different stories about Jesus Christ and this and that, and it would board the Sa'wi to tears.

They'd fall asleep on him most of the time. Had no interest whatsoever, but they got to one story. They got to one story that absolutely had them on the edge of their seat.

He shared the story of Jesus Christ. He shared how he came, how he led his disciples through Judea for three and a half years, and then he shared how at the end of that three and a half years, Christ was betrayed by one of his own. One of the people who followed him for three and a half years pretended to be his friend for three and a half years to the Sa'wi mind, and they were listening on the edge of their seats when they found out that Judas betrayed Christ and had it, and he was ultimately killed as a result. What dawn realized, though, that they were on the edge of their seats for all the wrong reasons. They believed that Judas was the hero of the story, that he was a legend maker, that he was what the behavior should be emulated, that he was the one that people should be looking to and honoring in this case, that he'd made the perfect play. I mean, he didn't even see it coming, according to the Sa'wi. He was a legend maker in their eyes.

So, dawn, as you might imagine, came away from that encounter very discouraged.

How am I going to bring the gospel to a people that value treachery and deceit above all else?

How can I bring this to them? Their culture was so evil when compared to the Judeo-Christian ethic of Scripture. How would they listen? How would they understand? Integrity, honesty, truth were absolute foreign concepts in this culture, absolute foreign concepts. These were things that were viewed as suspect, they were viewed as weakness, in some ways not to be striven for, but to be put aside instead for deceit and for treachery. How do you operate in a culture whose values are still contrary to what you believe? I mean, I'm not asking you to get into the grisly piece of it. Put yourself in this culture for a moment. Imagine that this is the culture in which you've grown up. This is what you've been used to. This is what is normal. This is what's encouraged. This is what they are trying to get you to become. You know, today, even though, you know, our culture is deceitful, even though deceit is a big thing in our culture, the vast majority still realize it's wrong. You know, most people will say, oh yeah, yeah, I lie, but I know it's not okay. It's not encouraged. It's not celebrated. It's not promoted, so to speak.

You imagine living in a culture where the highest honor you could receive is to lie to somebody and make them think that you care about them right before you betray them and take their life.

That is the highest ideal to strive for in your culture. I can't, honestly, I can't imagine trying to, one, grow up in a culture like that. Who do you trust? Who do you trust? You're looking around suspicious all the time. You wouldn't know who to trust. You wouldn't know who to open up to, or, you know, you see, here's here a crunching of leaves behind you. You whip around real fast, like, I gotcha. I saw that one coming. But when it does happen, instead of being punished for your actions, you're lauded, celebrated, and elevated to this person of status. It's just unbelievable to me. You have dawn eventually found an inroad with the Thawe people after tensions flared and a bloody war broke out between the three tribes that had settled near their Tuan visitors. As the war raged on, dawn urged peace, and finally the war ended after the exchange of what is known as a peace child. The story might begin to start sounding familiar. Mr. Dick talked about this probably a decade ago at the feast. That's where I first became aware of this particular story.

But a peace child was one of the children of the tribe that were given to the other tribe as a peace offering. Now, the child wasn't killed. In fact, quite the contrary. As long as the child remained alive and safe, peace would hold. Now, if the other side decided to kill the child, the war would continue. It was effective. It ended the war. It ended the war. The peace held.

And dawn realized, here's my connection. He spoke of Jesus Christ as the peace child that was given to mankind by God as an offering to man. And they went, huh, well, that's something that culturally we connect with. And they started to kind of latch on, and they started to learn, and they started to understand and desire to understand. I watched the video kind of recently. It's what kind of re-sparked this again. But, you know, after this war had been waged and after it had become a big issue and had kind of calmed back down again, as time went on, he learned their language well enough to translate the entirety of the New Testament into Sowey, left the New Testament there with them. And then eventually, him and his family left. They maintained partial contact with the tribe as they left. But what got me thinking about this again was seeing a video recently of his son and him and his sons returning to Papua New Guinea after 25 years of being away from this tribe. After 25 years, they got back in the same type of boats that they paddled them down river originally with the same people that paddled them originally, those that were still alive. Some were not, and so their children stood in symbolically and paddled them back to this place. And what he found when he returned was a vibrant community of believers, full, absolutely full of older people with gray hair, stooped shoulders. They lived because the war had ended. The disease had been taken care of. A number of these other things had been done. And so he found this incredible community.

Interestingly enough, the tribes had grown in their faith in God. They weren't cut off from war and disease. They shared the gospel with their surrounding tribes. The Sāwe did. They shared the gospel with their surrounding tribes. They had a shared faith. They began to intermarry with some of the tribes. They began to intermarry with some of the groups there, which cemented, again, relations between the tribes. Made it easier to deal with because they had in-laws and whatever else among it. They've moved from polygamy to monogamy. They've lived in peace and harmony for the last 25 years. And the way that this was done, ultimately, was through the receipt of a message of truth and integrity to a culture that had no such thing in some ways in their own culture.

Dawn's adventure, again, is recorded in a book entitled, Peace Child. It was published back in 1974.

Mr. Dick gave a phenomenal sermon at the feast about a decade ago entitled, The Same. It can still be found, and it's absolutely worth a listen. The message of the gospel in this case and its expectations in the life of a believer could not be further from the culture and society of the Sāwi at that time. It could not have been more opposite of the way the Sāwi were living their lives. Could not have been more opposite. Absolute night and day. Yet, what's amazing when you look at it, when you look at what the Sāwi were living prior to and what they were doing afterwards, the change also couldn't have been more night and day. Going from and leaving these old traditions and these old habits and these old things behind and moving into what is expected of them as a result of the gospel message. You know, as humans, our belief system is largely shaped by the culture in which we're raised to us because of Judeo-Christian ethics, because of the rule of law. I mean, we live in America. We have certain ethics and laws and things. In 2018, we can read about the behavior of the Sāwi and we can conclude it's wrong, because it's against the law of God, it's against the law of land, that the cultural system in which we were brought up says that this is incorrect. This is not okay, based on the law of God. But to the Sāwi, it was normal, it was accepted, and it was encouraged. Now, while we, again, are not to the degree of deceit and treachery in our current culture today, as is described in the book Peace Child, deceit and treachery certainly is winked at today. It's certainly winked at today. You know, perjury is happening on a regular basis, even though people are putting their hands on that Bible and saying, I solemnly swear to tell the whole truth, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

It's happening anyway. It's being winked at. Truth and integrity is a missing aspect of society today in many, many circles. There's actually a 2016 study published in the Journal of Intercultural Communication Research by a Dr. Tim Levine that showed of those that were willing to admit of their falsehoods. So for those that were actually willing to admit it, other ones are like, no, no, no, I don't lie. I understand. Never. Never once. Nope. Nope. Like, are you lying right now? Right now, are you? For those that were willing to acknowledge it, the number one reason why they lied was to cover up a transgression. In other words, to prevent themselves or from, you know, having some sort of a consequence as a result of what was said, or to prevent somebody else from finding out that they had, in fact, lied to them. The second and third were for financial gain or personal advantage.

So they lied about a situation where it was going to net them maybe a net personal amount of money or something along those lines, or give them an advantage in some way. And the fourth was for avoidance. The fourth was for avoidance. And I kind of liken this to the old, no, I can't make it, I have to shampoo my hair trick. Like, I don't really want to go out. No, I got stuff I got to do. I don't really want to go. So it's kind of the avoidance. Lying so that you don't have to end up going someplace, you know, like, I'm really sick today. I can't go into work. I really don't feel good. You know, that kind of thing that sometimes occurs. But in that same journal, what was really interesting was there was a breakdown in age as to how lying is done across age ranges. That was really interesting. More than a third of those polled across all age categories admitted to lying at least once every 24 hours. A full 33 percent. That was the lowest number on all of the age categories. That was the lowest number. And that was admitting to lying at least once every 24 hours. 10 percent, approximately 10 percent in all age categories. Approximately 10 percent in all age categories admitted to lying more than five times in that same time frame.

And then the rest of it, no idle, idle. Which may or may not be true. Two-thirds to three-quarters of all U.S. students polled admitted to academic dishonesty. That they cheated in some way, shape, or form in some point in time. Had admitted to having done it before. Tax evasion has gone up significantly since 1990. People that are running from paying their taxes. It's gone up. Cost of U.S. government $300 billion a year in tax evasion. Insurance fraud has been steadily climbing. People making up stories and trying to get insurance money. It's been on the climb since 1970.

Number of companies that we see embroiled in ethics scandals are on the rise, doping, performance enhancing, drug uses on the rise, workplace theft, occupational fraud.

And if additional evidence is necessary, you need to look no further than politics to see the pulse of our country. The world around us has a burgeoning ethics crisis.

And sadly, truth, honesty, and integrity are rare characteristics today.

When you meet somebody who says what they mean and means what they say, it's rare. It is. It's very rare to have people follow through on what it is that they say. But you know it didn't used to be this way. It did not used to be this way. There used to be contracts were sealed on a handshake. You know, they were sealed on a person's word. You know, my word is my bond.

Used to be that way. And in some places it still is. Well, some folks it still is.

But you know, it didn't used to be that you needed a 400-page manifesto of contract language in order to make sure something got done. You know, you could handshake on it and say it'll be done, and it was done. Why is integrity important? Why should we as Christians care? Let's go ahead and turn over to Deuteronomy 7. Let's go over to Deuteronomy 7. Because it didn't used to be this way. There was a time in this country when integrity existed, and not just when it not just existed, but it was sought after as a characteristic. Used to be a lack of integrity led to your dismissal from employment. Depending on your career, it may actually lead to advancement in your employment if it benefits the company. Used to be it would result in a scar that was so difficult to overcome in your reputation that it would be very hard to come back from.

It's a lack of integrity in the old days. Deuteronomy 7, turn over here, and we'll see God and his character described. You know, this is one of many, many, many places that describes God's character, but God is being essentially reintroduced to his people here after a very long captivity, after a very long period of time. Deuteronomy 7, we'll go ahead and pick it up in verse 9.

Really getting at this idea that Israel was a chosen people, that they were a chosen people, and not only that, their God was a special God. It was different than the other gods, lowercase g, that are around most of those other pantheons. Deuteronomy 7, verse 9, records as follows, it says, Therefore, know that the Lord your God, he is God, the faithful, notice the word faithful, the faithful God, who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love him and keep his commandments. God is faithful. He is a covenantal God. He keeps his covenant. He keeps his promises. He follows through on what he says he's going to do. He doesn't say one thing and then do another. It's not the old bait and switch, which is very different than other gods, again, lowercase g, in other pantheons. When you read, you know, Greek gods in mythology, when you read Roman gods, you read Egyptian gods, and the whole pantheons out there, what are most of their gods like? They're tricksters. They're messing with mankind just for the fun of it. You know, they say one thing and then they do another, or they offer this and then take it away, or, you know, whatever it might be, they're capricious. They're extremely capricious. They play games with man. They mess with humanity to receive joy. They don't always keep their word. They don't always follow through. The God whom we serve is very different. The God whom we serve is very different. He is a God of integrity. It is an absolute aspect of his character, truth and honesty and integrity, and as such, we should reflect that integrity to a world around us. The title of the message today is, Are you a person of integrity? Are you a person of integrity? And with the time that we have left today, I'd like to explore this concept and try to take a look at some aspects that we might not necessarily connect with integrity and encourage all of us, myself included, to be a person of integrity. So let's go ahead and begin today by turning over to the book of Matthew. Let's go over to the book of Matthew. Go to Matthew 5, and we'll pick up in the middle of Christ's Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 5, and we'll pick up kind of in the middle here.

Barkley, in this particular section on Matthew 5, discusses this passage in his daily study Bible commentary series on the book of Matthew. It's in volume 1, pages 158 to 162. And I want to get to the cultural context here before we read the passage, because understanding the context as to why it was said in the way that it was said is important. That way we can recognize what's the spiritual aspect here, what's the important part. Not that it's not important as verbatim written, but the cultural context is important here. At this point in time in history, culturally, people were committing frivolous swearing. This is discussed by Barkley. They would make sworn statements when there was no need for it at all. So they would make a factual statement, for example, like, this is an olive tree. And they would preface that with, by my life, this is an olive tree. For no reason. There's no reason to even include that. Or, by my head, or may I never see the comfort of Israel if this is not an olive tree. So there was this kind of frivolous swearing that was going on, making of oaths when there really is not a need to make an oath for a true statement here. It was kind of in vogue at the time. But the second aspect of this, which is frankly more concerning, was evasive swearing. Evasive swearing. Which means making an oath in order to be able to break that oath. Making the oath in order to be able to break it. If a Jew during Christ's time swore an oath that contained God's name, it was binding. 100% binding did not break it. Period. End of sentence. But if they swore upon the temple, if they swore upon heaven, if they swore upon something else, in their mind that was not as binding as swearing it upon God's name. And so they would, and could, break that oath. So the idea was that if God's name wasn't used, or if God's name was used in it, I should say, that God became a partner in that transaction.

And so you don't let him down because he's a partner in that transaction. But if you swear by your own head, or you swear by the temple, or you swear by whatever it might be, well, they're not going to be a, you know, partner in that particular transaction. So it's, it's all right. It could be broken. Maybe I don't take it as seriously if I do that. This kind of compartmentalizes God. This puts God in places where you say, well, God's in this, but he's not in this. Or God's in that, but he's not in this. Which is patently false. You know, Christ's point in Matthew 5, verse 33, is God's everywhere. You can't keep him out of any transaction. So don't swear on anything.

Let your yes be yes. Let your no be no. Let's go ahead and read this. Matthew 5, verse 33, says again, you have heard, you've heard it said that it would, to those of old, you shall not swear falsely, but shall perform your oath to the Lord. I say to you, do not swear at all, neither by heaven, for it is God's throne, nor by the earth, for it's his footstool, nor by Jerusalem, for it's the city of the great King. Nor shall you swear by your head, because you cannot make one hair white or black.

Verse 37, but let your yes be yes, and your no know, for whatever is more than these is from the evil one. You know, the point that Christ is making here is that God's present in all of these look-outs. He's a partner in every transaction, so don't swear an oath. Simply let your yes be yes. Let your no be no. James echoes these statements in James 5 and verse 12. But I think sometimes we can look at this passage and say, well, okay, that's all well and good. If I'm ever called as a witness, I won't swear on the Bible, because it clearly says, don't make an oath, you know, so I won't do that. I will affirm to tell the truth, and that's the best you're going to get out of me. Yes, I will tell the truth. You know, that's the best you're going to get. But it is so much more than this. It is so much more than this. This pervades into every aspect of our life. It pervades into every aspect of our life. Essentially, what Christ is telling the people here is your character, your integrity, your reputation should be of the utmost so that you don't have to swear an oath.

Your yes should be good enough because you are a trustworthy, upright person.

Because you don't have to assure them that, oh, well, you know, I've sworn this by this, so I'll follow through. No, he says, look, you're upright and honest, and you have integrity.

Therefore, yes is good enough or no is good enough. A person of integrity is a person who obeys the law, who obeys decisions that are made. A person of integrity does not go out and go against those. A person of integrity is a person who tells the truth, but not only tells the truth, also doesn't omit information for personal gain, leaving certain bits and pieces out so that people don't realize what's really going on. Integrity is being honest and is being truthful. A person of integrity is a person who honors their marriage vows. A person who doesn't take advantage of others. A person with integrity is someone who follows through on their obligations, pays their debts, who follows through. A person of integrity is a person who does their job even when their boss isn't watching, who doesn't divulge confidences, who doesn't lie, cheat, and steal. And the list goes on. It invades every aspect pervades—I should say, not invades, it's not the right word—but it pervades every aspect of our lives, letting our yes be yes and our no be no. When you kind of consider the spiritual principle behind that concept, we are admonished to become people of integrity. We're admonished to become people who don't need to swear an oath because we're known to be followers of God, and because our God is a God of integrity and we're to reflect Him and His characteristics to the world around us, it's expected that we're going to operate in that way. And therein lies the difficulty, because we have grown up in a culture that winks at deceit. We have grown up in a culture where little white lies are accepted, perfectly accepted, in the world around us. We've grown up in a culture that, even if we want to admit the truth for personal gain, well, that's even okay. Nobody asked you directly, so just don't worry about it. Don't volunteer it. I mean, that's crazy talk. That's the culture that we've grown up in. And growing up in a culture like this will have an effect, one way or the other. It causes us to take on aspects of the culture, even if we don't desire it, and it creeps in. And before long, a person can tell themselves, well, it's okay, besides, you know, everybody else does it, so what's the big deal? Well, what is God's expectation? God's expectation is absolute integrity. That's God's expectation, because that's a reflection of His personal character. You know, it's the most basic definition. Integrity is defined as an adherence to a code of moral or artistic value. In other words, regardless of the situation, regardless of the outcome, we adhere to that code. Regardless of the consequences, we adhere to that code. A secondary definition, though, is a soundness or a wholeness or a completeness. We might describe, you know, engineers might. I don't typically describe bridges as having integrity, but an engineer might look at a bridge and say, oh, those bridge pillars, well, they have integrity. It means they're solid, they're sound, they're not going to collapse anytime soon, because they have integrity, right? Just like if the bridge didn't have integrity, what would happen? Well, it would collapse. Just like if we don't have integrity, what happens to us? We collapse. At some point, our life starts to fall apart.

At its simplest, if we kind of boil it down to a country definition, we might say, integrity means we say what we mean, and we mean what we say. We do the right thing, even when no one is watching, and we do it for the right reasons. We don't try to get away with stuff. We don't try to see if we can sneak something where nobody's looking. Integrity means we value the truth, that it takes precedent in our life, and that we are incorruptible, that nobody can buy our favor in some way, shape, or form. Go ahead and turn over to the book of Proverbs. We're going to kind of pop through just a couple of these. There's a number of places in Proverbs that discuss integrity, and I want to address these. We're going to start in Proverbs 10, and I made everything go forward, so we're not going backward. We're going to go get a few of these rapid fire, but we're not going to move back and forth. We're just going to move forward through to find them. So Proverbs 10, if we go ahead and go ahead and turn over to verse 9 for the first one here. Proverbs 10 and verse 9.

Proverbs 10 and verse 9 says, He who walks with integrity, walks securely, walks soundly, walks safely, but he who perverts his ways will become known. You know, I think a lot of people sometimes like to think that they can get away with it, and that it's never ever ever ever ever going to come out, and it always, almost always does in this life, but it always will come out. God knows it always will come out one way or the other in this life or the next, or on the way to the next.

If we move forward to Proverbs 11 verse 3, there's another mention here. Proverbs 11 verse 3, the integrity of the upright will guide them. Our integrity can guide us. It can provide us with a navigation map, so to speak, because we know that in these situations we are always going to be truthful, always going to be honest. So there is no possibility of getting off in the weeds, because we know what our response is going to be in this situation, even if it hurts.

Even to our own hurt, we know what our response is going to be, or at least what our response should be. But the perversity of the unfaithful will destroy them. Notice the word that's been used a couple of times here, back in Proverbs 10.9, he who perverts his ways down here, but the perversity of the unfaithful will destroy them. This is the antithesis, so to speak, of integrity, is perversion, in some way, shape, or form. So Proverbs 12 verse 22. Proverbs 12 verse 22, forward just a little bit. This doesn't quite use the word integrity in the same way, but it discusses the idea of lying. It says lying lips are an abomination to the Lord. Lips that don't utter truth, that even shade the truth, you might say. Because again, lying is not just telling a lie directly, it's also shading the truth. But those who deal truthfully, those who deal truthfully, who truth or with whom truth is an outward expression, are his delight. Proverbs 19 verse 1, just a little bit further forward. Proverbs 19 verse 1, better is the poor who walks in his integrity than one who is perverse in his lips and is a fool.

Better to be poor and have integrity than to have riches and be a fool perversing your own lips.

And the last one we'll look at here, Proverbs 20 verse 7. Proverbs 20 verse 7, the righteous man walks in his integrity, his children are blessed after him.

A righteous man walks in his integrity and his children are blessed after him. You know, we spoke last week about the importance of teaching and training the next generation, our youth, examining our children and the blessing that they are and the importance of our example in that process. What they see is what they emulate. Integrity, then, is taught in the home. It's taught in the home. It's what they see. It's what they experience. It's what they follow. It's what they emulate. And so if they see you owning your mistakes and trying to make it right, or if they see you trying to do the right thing or doing the right thing, even if no one's watching, they'll learn to hold to that pattern of integrity. But if they see you keep the extra money that was handed back to you in error, or if they see you skip out on your obligations and on your debts, they see you taking advantage of other people or living in opposition to integrity, they're going to learn that too. They're going to learn that too.

Proverbs 20, verse 7, again says, the righteous man walks, he lives, he operates in his integrity, and his children are blessed after him. Why are the children blessed?

Because they saw his example, and because the example, they will live what they saw. Now, obviously, physical blessings, spiritual blessings come with that as well. But the importance of that example cannot be overstated. While we have people in the church operating flagrantly without integrity is not common, to be honest. It's not super common. It does occur, and it's important to consider these aspects of things as we consider integrity. But there are also ways to operate without integrity and not even realize it, not even think about it sometimes.

And so with the time that we have left, I'd like to quickly examine three of those things that you can do to harm your integrity without even realizing you're doing it. And I'm guilty of some of these, as I'm sure are you. The first thing that we'll look at is meet your obligations.

Meet your obligations. The second thing is to confirm veracity or truthfulness. Confirm veracity. And three, be honest. Be honest. So the first thing I'd like to look at today is meet your obligations, because it is so easy in this day and age to want to say yes. It's so easy. Somebody comes up and says to you, hey, what do you think about this and this and this? Yeah, let's do it! Yeah, that sounds great. What about this? What about that? Yeah, let's do that, too. Hey, what about this? Yes! Love it! Let's do it. And before you realize it, you've overcommitted. There's no way you can do them all, and something's going to get dropped. Well, what did you just do? You just said you were going to do something, and then you didn't follow through. Is that a falsehood?

Yeah, it is. It is. And it happens. It happens a lot. I'm guilty of this. I over, I am somebody that's saying, oh, yeah, I love that! Let's do it, let's do it, let's do it, this is great, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. No is hard. No is hard. It's hard to say that to people. People will ask us if we can help them out. We want to say, yeah, we don't often consider whether or not we're actually able to do so or not. We just want to make people happy, so we say yes, whether we can follow through or not. And sometimes that additional load, maybe we don't drop that, but we drop something else that we committed to, right? Because when you've got all the plates spinning, you're trying to keep track of all of those things. And we might look at that, and we might think, okay, that's innocent. Come on, Mr. Light, that's not that big of a deal, right? It's innocent, but the effect that it can have on our integrity and on our reputation is huge. It is huge, especially if it's something that happens regularly. You know, after a time, if we said, oh yeah, I'll do that, and then we don't follow through, people begin to think that our words ring hollow. It's a boy who cried wolf kind of thing, like, well, he said he's going to do it, but he never does, so... Eventually, you drop enough plates, people start to distrust you, and your reputation becomes that of someone who does not tell the truth, a person that provides lip service and empty promises. Let your yes be yes, and let your no be no. It's okay to say no. It's okay to set boundaries. It's okay to do those things.

It's not always, though, over commitment that keeps us from following through. Sometimes, those dropped plates can come from a result of what the Greeks called a crazia. They called it a crazia. Cool word. I love it way better than procrastination. A crazia. It's the act of acting against your better judgment. In other words, you... and this can go either way. It's not just procrastination. It can go either way. You know you're busy. You know you really can't commit to one more thing, but you do it anyway. Guess what? You just committed a crazia. You acted against your better judgment, because your better judgment would have said, you know you can't follow through on that. You need to say somebody else needs to do it. Right? But the other side of that is, too, that you have your certain commitments, and instead of doing them, you decide to do something else, which is also acting against your better judgment, which is also a crazia, or what we might call today, procrastination. Victor Hugo, who was the author of Les Miserables and another very famous work known as The Hunchback of Notre Dame, some of you might have heard of it, was facing the latter of these things in 1830. It's actually a really funny story. He promised his publisher a new book, and the book that he promised them was Hunchback of Notre Dame. And he told them he would have it done by the end of summer of 1830. Well, here it is, the end of summer. He wasn't even close. He wasn't even close.

Like, he sort of kind of started it, but he wasn't even close. He was in a situation where he spent his time over the past year entertaining people, having people over to the house, you know, going out and enjoying the social life, going out and doing all these things, pursuing other projects, working on other things, and completely and totally delaying his work.

What, again, we would call procrastination today. So his publisher frustrated because they wanted a new book, didn't get it, frustrated, said, okay, you have six months. This book needs to be completed in six months. You have until February of 1831. And so him knowing himself, knowing Victor Hugo, knowing himself very well, his method to fix it was a little unconventional. He asked one of his assistants to collect all of his formal clothing, all of the clothing that he would wear outside of his house to go to social gatherings, to go out and schmooze with the fensiful people, you know, to go out and do these different things.

He said, take it all and lock it in a chest, and you hide the key. He goes, I don't have any clothes. I'm not going to go out. And so he spent the winter months of 1830, dressed in a gray shawl, writing furiously in his home. And he knocked the book out. In fact, in his little self-imposed exile, he managed to finish it two weeks early in January of 1831. So he got it done early, in fact, with his little writing, writing marathon, so to speak. But The Hunchback of Notre Dame was that book, and it was published two weeks early in January of 1831.

But he missed the original deadline as a result of his own accresia, his own acting against his better judgment. We can run the risk of doing the same thing through overcommitment or through procrastination. It's very easy to do. And I would argue that we are all guilty of that in our own lives at times. Just like Victor Hugo, but the trick is, if we make and break enough of our commitments at some point in time, our word means nothing, and our reputation suffers greatly.

And that is an example of having a lack of integrity that can come from something very simple and very innocent that you don't necessarily think about. We have to be very careful that we meet our obligations. Another thing we need to make sure and do is confirm veracity. Confirm veracity. And this has become more and more and more important in today's day and age, culturally, than ever before.

Because one of the most popular buzzwords of 2018 was fake news. Fake news. Very popular buzzword of 2018 and 2017, too, for that matter. Research showed in the run-up to the 2016 election that there were fake news articles, fake stories, and a number of other things rampantly circulated all over social media platforms. For both sides. For both sides. And this problem continues even today. Facebook, for example, has developed entire teams of people. Their whole entire job is to monitor what is posted on Facebook to ensure whether it is true or not.

And what is not true is pulled. What is true is allowed to stay. And this has a lot of people crying foul because, hey, wait a minute, what about the bias of the people evaluating things, etc., etc. And that's a legitimate concern. But it was bad enough that they had to do something. And so they put these groups of people. I can't tell you.

The things that I see on Facebook sometimes that are shared that are just patently false, just absolutely patently false, it's unreal. The amount of things that are shared that is completely and totally fake, that is not true. And frankly, a quick Google search will show that it's not true. You can quickly Google it, and it's completely fake. Good intentions, shared with good intentions, but when good intentions meet emotion, often bad decisions are made. If we are striving to become a person of integrity, it is essential that we confirm the truth of things before we share them with other people, that we confirm veracity.

We make certain that what we are sharing is true, that it is accurate, that it is not false. By way of example, to give you a perfect example, I wanted to start this sermon today with a wonderful illustration about the Great Wall of China. As the story goes, the Chinese built the Great Wall in a series of segments, and eventually the Kin Dynasty, during that time frame, the wall was connected in its entirety.

So one of the seven wonders of the world stretches more than 4,000 miles, and its primary purpose was to protect China from the rotting hordes outside of its borders. Mongols, Manchurians, which invaded as time went on periodically, and a number of other nomadic barbarian tribes. These guys had started raising villages on the outside of China's territory, so they built these huge wall segments, and then eventually connected them, and they were able to protect their never-eat-shredded wheat western border. Sorry, I had to take a moment there. I always do the never-eat-shredded wheat, or never-eat-soggy waffles is the other one you can do for northeast-southwest.

Am I the only one that does that? Maybe I am, sorry. I also do it left and right, if you knew this or not. That's an L. Anyway, all right, moving on. China, though, desired to protect their border from attack. And so they construct this wall over a number of years with a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, and frankly, a lot of bodies, which are in the wall, by the way, which is creepy and weird to think about, but it wasn't effective, as the story goes. In fact, the first 100 years of the wall's existence, China was invaded three times, not because they scaled the wall, but because they bribed the guards to let them in. What a perfect illustration for a sermon on integrity. Perfect! Perfect! In fact, it's found in 1500 Biblical illustrations for preaching by Michael Green, page 716. Check it out if you'd like. The only problem? It doesn't appear to be true. It's not true. It's apocryphal at best, patently false at worst. Great story, fantastic story. One look—I googled like crazy looking for the source of this, where it started, and I have pretty good Google food. So I'm looking around. There was one location that I found that actually cited a claim by this person, and this person's name was Charles O. Hucker, and he is a Chinese—he's an American scholar on Chinese history, and he wrote a book called China's Imperial Pass that was published in 1974. Well, the book's online, and so you can index all the words and search and all that fun stuff. There's no mention of it anywhere in his book. That is the one place online that actually cites this. So while it's a wonderful story, it's apocryphal at best, at best, and false at worst. I didn't lead with that story for a reason, because I can't prove it's true. I can't prove it's true. If we desire to be known as people of integrity, it's essential that we take the time to confirm the truth of something before we share it with others.

And sadly, in today's day and age, that can be really tough to do, because there's a lot of stuff that gets shared out there on a regular basis that you just have a very hard time sometimes finding out whether it's true or not. But after a time, if we are seen as someone who is sharing things consistently that are false, people won't trust anything that comes out of our mouth. Because other things have been false, what's to say this isn't true? And so, on our social media platforms, on other things, Facebook in particular, this happens a lot, we really need to ask ourselves, is this true? We have got to strive to ensure that there are no corrupt communications, no lies, no falsehoods, no partial truths that come out of our mouths or at the end of our fingertips by doing our due diligence to prove things, as it talks about in 1 Thessalonians 5 verse 21.

There are folks in the church who have swallowed the lie of a flat earth and share it regularly.

Pop it out there on the internet and just share it up. Look at this! Oh, the earth's flat! Clearly, it's a governmental conspiracy. They've been hiding it from everybody for so long.

Everywhere. You see it. There are folks in the church that believe all manner of conspiracy theories, all kinds of conspiracy theories that get shared all the time. There were things that people circulated during the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, during the hearings for Brett Kavanaugh, that were completely untrue, that were obviously photoshopped, and that were being circulated as truth. Now, it's not necessarily the fault of the person that received it, but we have to do our due diligence to decide before we hit that share button or before we decide we're going to put that back out there, is this true? What we maybe should stop and say is, should I even share this at all?

Whether it's true or not?

Maybe we should stop and say, should I even believe this at all? Is it truly true?

You know, integrity, again, is a soundness. It's an incorruptibility. Can we remain incorrupt in our communication? The last thing that we need to look at and consider is to be honest. And one of the ways to do this is to always be honest. You know, there's a quote that's been attributed to Mark Twain—PS, he never said it. I Googled it. But no, he really truly never said it. The aphorism was going around all over the place. It's attributed to him, but it was said in multiple places and not directly to him. But the idea is, if we always tell the truth, we don't have to construct and remember a story. We don't have to remember a story because the truth is the truth. It's simple. It's easy. It doesn't require constructing something and propping something up like a house of cards that eventually could be chipped away at as we forget details or whatever else as time goes on. The truth is truly liberating. It is truly liberating. You know, more importantly, though, when we are people of integrity, more people who speak the truth, people will know that whenever they deal with us, what they're getting is open, honest communication. That is so refreshing. The few people that I worked with at the school that I taught at that were not those who would—who were why—let's put it this way, because part of my job was going into a classroom and observing individuals teach and then having very frank, very difficult conversations after that about what needed to change, what needed to shift, how we can make sure that we're getting somewhere with our kids, how we can make sure they're being managed in an appropriate way. And it was hard conversations. I absolutely—I wanted to just hug them when they'd come up and go, that was a disaster.

And you're like, oh, thank you. That's already broached. You're right, it really was.

That was rough. Let's do what we can do to fix it for the next go-around, right? So I loved it when people were willing to admit when things were a problem, when it was tough. Because when you know you've got somebody like that, they're not going to try to hide it. They're not going to try to keep it from you in any way. I'm not much of a tennis player. You might—duh.

But in 2005, I came across this story that was just unreal. There's a tennis player named Andy Roddick—I know some of you are tennis people. I know some of you guys are. Andy Roddick, and he was playing against a Spanish tennis player named Fernando Verdasco. This was back in 2005, and it was a big tournament. And Roddick was the number one seed at that point in time. He was favored to win the whole thing. I mean, he was favored to go through and win it all. So he's playing him in the round of 16. So he's not even at the top of the thing yet. This is still round of 16 down below. And he played remarkably well. The game—or the match, I guess—had gone to triple match point with Verdasco. And he served this just blistering serve that was called out. It was called out. So Roddick wins! Everybody's cheering. Everybody's having a grand old time. They're chanting Roddick's name. They're all excited because he's won.

And as Verdasco started to jog to the net to shake Roddick's hand—the game's over. He won. He's advancing, right? He goes to the umpire and informs him it was in. Serve was on the line. It wasn't out. It was in. And the ump said, no, I called it out. You know, you don't have to—it's not an honor system thing. The ump says what it is. It is what it is. You can take it or leave it. And he said, no. He said, there's the indentation that the ball hit on the clay court. It's right there. It's right there. It was in. It hit the line. It was in. I lost. At that particular set. So he showed him the mark. Ultimately, the call was reversed. The point was awarded to him. Ultimately, he lost the whole thing. He didn't advance. And he got trotted out in the media like you wouldn't believe. The articles online say, oh, honesty backfires on Roddick. Well, it didn't backfire. The guy won the game fair and square. It was no backfiring at all. But it was like there—it was almost like in the insinuation in that headline was, well, he should have just shut up about it. He shouldn't have said anything. He shouldn't have said a word. It would have been just fine. It's unreal. Roddick couldn't accept it. It cost him tens of thousands of dollars. Had he gone on to win the tournament, probably even more than that.

But his integrity was more important than winning. It was more important than money.

You know, honesty isn't always answering a question that's posed to you correctly. Sometimes it's a willingness to provide additional information that someone might not have up front to make their decision more just. Because when you have all the pieces of the puzzle, you can make an accurate decision. When you do not have pieces of the puzzle, it's impossible to make a righteous judgment of any kind. You don't have all the information. And when that information isn't volunteered, when that information is kept back in the event of advantage or something along those lines, it's very difficult to do. You know, could Mr. Roddick have just taken the call and gone forward, won the money, won the championship, continued his ride from the tennis world? Yeah, absolutely he could have. But it would have been ill-gotten gains, and he would have known it.

You know, it seems like he's the type of person that has the integrity that that would have haunted him going forward, knowing that he had not won that particular match. Now, the good news is he went on and he played and he did a great job later on, too. You know, he had a good tennis career, and I'm not 100% sure if he's still playing today or not, but he acted with integrity, he acted with honesty, even to the point of his own loss. Let's turn over to Psalm 15 as we start to wrap things up here today. Psalm 15.

In Psalm 15, we see a very important question asked in this that's written into this particular Psalm in kind of a in a way rhetorical way, but not truly rhetorical in its sense. Psalm 15 is described as the character of those who may dwell with the Lord. Now, we are here today, obviously, to worship God and to be a part of, you know, Sabbath services, part of our weekly opportunity to praise God. But in addition, this evening, we're going to be talking about our Feast of Tabernacles experiences. We're going to be talking about the things that we experienced in the places that we went, the things that we enjoy, the lessons that we learned. In fact, we, during that time frame, looked forward to the time when God's people will dwell with God upon that holy hill.

That's what the the days symbolize. It's what we looked forward to.

But these are the characteristics. Look what it says. Psalm 15. Lord, who may abide in your tabernacle? Who may dwell in your holy hill? Verse 2. He who walks uprightly and works righteousness and speaks the truth in his heart? And we look at that and we go, what? It says in his heart, the mouth follows the heart, right? He who does not backbite with his tongue, who's not always constantly criticizing, who's not always constantly negative, who's not always, you know, chewing on this person or that person or whatever it might be, nor who does evil to his neighbor, nor does he take up a reproach against his friend, in whose eyes a vile person is despised, but he honors those who fear the Lord. He who swears to his own hurt and does not change? And who says yes to his own hurt? Who answers the question, even though it might hurt them and does not change? He who does not put out his money at usury, nor he who takes a bribe against the innocent? He who does these things shall never be moved. These are the characteristics of those that will dwell on God's holy hill in the kingdom of God. These are the characteristics that are expected of us as we navigate this society today. Now, you read those things in Psalm 15. Is that society today? No. No. Not as a whole. No. Are there a few that walk uprightly in society today? Yeah, sure. I mean, yeah, there are. There are people who really, truly in their hearts try to do the right thing, who speak the truth, who do not backbite. You know, there are people that do that, but as a whole, society does not. Society does not. These are the characteristics that are expected to us, or for us, I should say, to navigate this culture and the society today. Now, our society may not be to the degree that the psalm culture was, to the degree that deceit and treachery is the absolute foundation, but it's heading there awfully quick. It's heading that direction awfully quick, as God's blessing is being removed slowly, and as people are turning to their baser natures. As we see these things going on in the world around us, integrity is even that much brighter of a light in the darkness. You run into somebody, like we said earlier, who you know tells the truth, who you know is a person of integrity. You notice it. They stick out like a sore thumb. That's what God wants us to be like. That's what God wants us to do. God desires that we meet our obligations, that we confirm the veracity of the things that we share with others, that we're honest at all times, even to our own hurt. But if we live in this way, if we live like this, the light of God will be shown in the darkness. People will see it. They'll see God and His character because that true integrity of God's character will be reflected from God through us to those in the world around us. Hope you all have a wonderful Sabbath, have an opportunity to enjoy the potluck this evening, and have our final song service here. Have the song leader come on back up.