Veneer Isn't Worth Anything

There was no reason to believe that George would be anybody. George was one of those people that no one thought he would succeed. There was no reason to even think that George would succeed. George was born, and no one's even quite sure, sometime in the early 1860s, that he was a slave. His dad died sometime before he was born.

And they're not even sure what happened to him. They think it was an accident. His mother was kidnapped by slave raiders, came up from Arkansas, they lived in Missouri, and took George and his mother and stole them. They worked on a small farm, and they would resell the slaves. The family was able to get George back. George is a little kid, they get him back. George would live with this family, they would raise him, and he would take their name. Some of you probably know who he is. Anyone know who I'm talking about? George Washington Carver.

When my kids were small, we used to take them, when we traveled, we would take them to every museum, historical site, biggest mall online, whatever it was, we would stop and see. And we took them to George Washington Carver's birthplace. And my son especially was absolutely fascinated because my son was a little boy at the time.

This little boy was about his same age, and what he had gone through. And it was fascinating. As we went there, we toured his birthplace and so forth. I became fascinated with the man's life. Because he went from a life that no one would suspect would be able to do anything, to a man who was one of the leading scientists in the United States in the last century. I knew him as the man who discovered peanut butter, which I was really happy for. As a kid, that's all I knew, George Washington Carver. He discovered peanut butter, and that was good. But what he did was amazing. What he went through to become educated. What he had to go through to become educated. And what he struggled with. But what I find interesting about George Washington Carver is how he lived his life. There's a few people that I look at in life, and you study whether they're biblical people or people even outside the scripture. And you find certain qualities that are just not common. And George Washington Carver spent his entire life creating hundreds of patents, discoveries, and then he refused, well, I say discoveries, he refused to patent them. The man could have been incredibly wealthy. And he refused it. In fact, he even said he wanted only students, though, that he refused wealth and fame.

And he did all these discoveries because he said, I want to do these things to help other people. Poor people, especially. And he did it for all races, all people. He spent his life trying to accomplish something to help other people and gave up what many people would consider the most important thing in life.

There's a couple sayings he did that I always find real interesting. One is, it is not the style of clothes one wears, these are the kind of automobiles that one drives, or the amount of money that he has in the bank that counts. These things mean nothing. It is simple service that measures success.

Now, that's a nice saying. And there's been lots of people make sayings like that. It's very rare to find a person who says that and then actually lives that way. The say something is one thing. The say something and live by it is something else. My favorite saying that he ever wrote was, there's no shortcut to achievement. Life requires thorough preparation.

Vanir isn't worth anything. Vanir isn't worth anything. Now, Vanir is an interesting concept.

You know, if you want to buy a really nice expensive piece of furniture that's solid wood, they can be very, very expensive, right? But you can get something that looks just like that, that has a cheaper wood underneath, or maybe particle board.

I went to look at some bookshelves this week because I needed some bookshelves for my office. And I was surprised how many bookshelves I saw that looked really nice, and I took the shelves out and looked at the particle board.

I don't even know what was holding it together. The gaps and the holes, and it was like, this stuff will last. But it had a really nice Vanir oak on it or mahogany that looked really good but really thin.

That's what Vanir is. Now, all Vanir is not bad, you know, if it's put over the right wood. But usually, Vanir is used to cover up something of inferior quality. Vanir isn't worth anything. Now, this character trait that looks at life and says, no, I don't want to have Vanir. I need to be genuine. I need to have... and it needs to be of quality. It's called integrity.

Integrity is what we demand of our leaders, is what we demand of our salespeople, our bankers, our lawyers. We demand integrity. All politicians claim to have integrity. None of us believe them.

But what is it? Now, a lot of times if you ask someone what is integrity, they'll say, it's honesty. Honesty is part of integrity. Integrity is actually greater than it. It has to do with living a life with no Vanir and not covering up an inferior product, but actually becoming the superior product with no Vanir at all. Steven Carter, who is a Yale Law professor and has written many books over the years, I don't know, probably ten years ago, I read a book he wrote just called Integrity, and it was a fascinating book. Mr. Carter is a, well, typical lawyer in some ways. You think, well, a lawyer writing on integrity. But he has a brilliant mind, and a brilliant logical mind. That's probably why he's a law professor at Yale. And he wrote a book just studying integrity. He wrote a book before that called The Culture of Unbelief. What has caused the United States to give up basic core religious values? Why? What's caused that? Well, that actually led to his second book. And when he talks about integrity, here's how he describes it. Integrity actually comes from a Latin word. You've all heard the word integer? A whole number. It's a whole number. In other words, it's not divided. It's whole. There's some kind of, there's a completeness to it. He writes, the word integrity comes from the same Latin root as integer, and historically has been understood to carry much of the same sense. The sense of wholeness. A person of integrity, like a whole number, is a whole person. A person that's undivided. That's a very important concept to understand. A person who is undivided. There's three different Hebrew words in the Old Testament that are translated, usually integrity in your English Bible. One of them is tome. Tome literally means complete, whole, undivided. So we see the word integrity, there's subtle differences. In the English you'll find many times, two or three Hebrew words translated as one. And sometimes we miss the subtle differences. But tome literally means integrity. It means it's whole. Something that's whole. Now, don't turn. I'm just going to read a couple places where tome is used. And listen to how it's used. This is just in Psalms and Proverbs. Psalm 25, David said, "...let integrity and uprightness preserve me, for I wait for you, he is waiting for God." In other words, my wholeness keeps me going while I'm waiting for you, waiting for God. Solomon says in Proverbs 10, "...you who walks with integrity walk securely, but he who perverts his ways will become known." In other words, with this concept of wholeness, I'm a complete person, I have security. That's how Solomon put it. In Proverbs 19, he says, "...better is the poor who walks within his integrity, than one who is perverse in his lips, and is a fool." And then Proverbs 20, "...the righteous man walks into his integrity, his children are blessed after him." Integrity as a person has generational effects.

Now, we're not going to talk about integrity today just in terms of society's definition of integrity. What you look for in your banker, which, once again, is basically honesty. When we talk about integrity, much of the time we're talking about honesty. Honesty is part of integrity. You can't be a dishonest person and have integrity. But integrity, in the spiritual sense, is bigger than that. Because it has to do with wholeness. It has to do with being a complete person. You and I are divided people. We're born divided. We don't have God's Spirit. Inside our minds, our thoughts, our emotions, our actions are all fragmented. And they're going all over the place. That's who we are. We're all divided people. And in Satan's world, we just become more and more fragmented. That's why someone can defend with all their heart that we should destroy a bird's egg because it's life. Though we defend human abortion at the same time. You see, that's going to argue what's happening all the time. You say, how could you say this is life and this isn't life? And yet, to them, it's consistent. It's fragmented. It's fragmented thinking. We are fragmented people. We're not whole. We know that. And if you could just really think about how you feel and think much of the time, we're not whole people. We're fragmented. Well, integrity is about becoming whole. Spiritual integrity is about becoming whole. If you sum this up, we could say simply stated, the more consistent a person is with knowing what he actually believes, conducting his life based on those beliefs, and articulating what he believes, the more complete he or she is. If I know what I believe, I act on it, and then I can defend it. I can speak about it. I am complete. Well, the problem is, what if someone believes something false? You're going to be a complete person in terms of what you believe and how you act and what you say is all consistent, but what if it's wrong? So when we talk about integrity, spiritual integrity, we have to start with what is right. And that's... I'm going to go back to Stephen Carter, because in his book, he describes integrity as three steps. And I'm going to take these and apply them directly to Scripture and how we need to have God develop in us spiritual integrity. He says, first of all, integrity is discerning what is right and wrong. Now remember, last month I gave a sermon on discernment. So really, that's almost an introduction to this. If we don't know how to discern, then we can't have integrity, because we'll be fragmented all the time. You know, most... you think about how many people you know that are in trouble all the time, because they just go with how they feel at the moment. That's the way I feel, so off they go. And you say, that person's a mess, you know, because you just pulled every different direction of how they feel, fragmented person.

Discern what is right and wrong. We have to be able to see this is right by a certain set of standards. And of course, we're talking about spiritual integrity here, so we're starting with a premise. The premise is, God tells us what's right and wrong. Okay, that's our premise. So we have to be able to discern that. Secondly, we have to act on what we discern. It's not enough to say, I know this is right or wrong. I wish I had a dollar for every time I've said down with a person that said, Oh, I know that we should keep the Sabbath. I've proven that in the Bible. And as soon as I retire, I'll keep the Sabbath.

Now, that's fragmented thinking. That's fragmented thinking. But we all do it. We all do it. And before we're done here, I'm going to give you a little study. I give you homework a lot. You'll start getting homework. It's something to work on this week. It turns out, do I really have spiritual integrity? So we have to discern. We have to act. And then the third one is very important. He says we have to openly say why we did what we did. We have to defend our actions. You ever have someone... My wife does this to me all the time. I think I'm so right, and she'll say some little thing. And I'm nailed. And I'm trying to find a way to make myself be right anyways.

There's time. Funny thing about integrity. The more integrity we have, the easier it is to say, I was wrong. Because you're looking for wholeness instead of defending fragmented fishy. You're actually searching for wholeness. So the more integrity we have, the easier it is to say, I was wrong. Because now I can't defend what I was doing. I cannot defend it with the criteria that I used. You know, the scriptural criteria. So remember, by the way, without God's Spirit, you can't become a person who is whole. We've got two basic problems, you and I. We were born without God's Spirit, which means we were incomplete, and then Satan got to us and corrupted our nature. See, we were an incomplete person to begin with. When you think about it, you can't obtain eternal life without God's Spirit in you. We're only, well, we are born, we're only half there. The other half isn't there, God's Spirit isn't there. We have a spirit man, but we don't have a spirit of God. So we're only half there. And then Satan comes along and corrupts us. So we're fragmented. In every way you can think of, we're not a whole person. We feel that. It bothers us. We know it deep inside. We're not a complete person. And so what do we do? You know, why do people do one-night stands? Because they're an incomplete person, and they're trying to find completeness. Why do people abuse drugs? Why do people... I mean, it's because everybody's trying to say, there's something here, it's not complete. I'm not complete. Well, no. Christianity is the process of becoming complete. That means we're in the process of becoming a person of integrity, where all the parts fit together. All the parts fit together.

Spiritual integrity. Let's go to Mark 12. Look what Jesus says about integrity here. Mark 12. It'd be nice for me to be able to get up and give a sermon. And I can rant and rave about how politicians have no integrity, and it'd be great.

But you know, we're here because we're supposed to be looking at what God wants to do in our lives. And so we have to look at ourselves, which is a whole lot harder than looking at somebody else. Verse 28. Here's where we start with integrity, a scripture that most of you can just rattle off by heart. Now one of the scribes came, having heard them reason together, perceived that he'd answered well, and asked him, asked Jesus Christ, which is the first commandment of all. Now he goes right back to Deuteronomy, and he says, this is the most important commandment. Now this question, by the way, is not necessarily a trick question. This was a question the rabbis argued all the time.

There's 613 laws in the Old Testament, in the Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. Okay? The question is, how do we frame those? Because there's got to be conflicts. Like, I shouldn't do work on the Sabbath, but my cow just fell into a hole. Do I let the cow die, or do I work to get it out of the hole? Is that breaking the Sabbath? The ox and the ditch argument that they brought to Jesus. That wasn't a trick question. They were divided over that. The Pharisees said, you saved the cow. The Essenes said, you let it die. They were divided over that issue. And so they were always saying, what criteria do we use? Where do we start? There was actually one faction in Judaism at the time that said, the most important of all the laws was to wear tassels on the bottom of your clothes. Do you think, well, that's ridiculous. Their argument was, why do you wear tassels to remember the law? Well, if you wear the tassels, you'll never forget the law. So the rest of the law will be in your mind because you wear the tassels. So this is a huge philosophical, important discussion. Actually, you and I do that all the time. We're always trying to look at God's ways and God's laws and apply them, which applies here, which is the most important principle here. So they're asking this question. What is it that we can say, this is the law that decides all other laws? And he says, verse 29, Jesus answered him, The first of all, the commandments is, Here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God. And there could be a period there, but that's not what the law says. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul. That means your life, all your life, all your mind, and all your strength. This is the first commandment. Now, what part of your life is outside your heart, your soul, your mind, and your strength? He starts with, you're going to have to be a whole person. And that complete whole person can only be obtained when you love God with absolutely everything. That's interesting. You said you love God with absolutely everything. There's no part of your life you're holding back. Your wealth, your resources, your time, your energy, your emotions, your thoughts. Oh, man, this integrity thing is really hard. The more I have studied into this for 15 years, after I read Carter's book, I was like, I don't know anything about integrity. I thought I did. Or I studied what the Bible says about it. The whole Bible is about us becoming a complete person. And it means everything. It means everything. So this is the beginning discussion of spiritual integrity. You and I have to love God more than anything. And that includes our emotions, our thoughts, our strengths, how you spend your life, every aspect of how we spend our lives. When we compromise, when we sin, when we have wrong thoughts, when we lose control of our own emotions, we expend our energy in ways that aren't pleasing to God, we have compromised our integrity.

Some of the greatest penalties we receive sometimes for sin is inside us. It's internal. Especially if we have a relationship with God. I can remember as a child, I was talking about this with someone before services, I can remember as a child, I thought my dad was disappointed in me.

Oh man, that was the worst thing to happen in the world. Beat me, I don't care, just don't be disappointed in me. So when we disappoint God, we actually should feel that. The more integrity we have, the more sensitive we become to those things. The more sensitive we are to our relationship with God. Look at Matthew chapter 19. This has to do with integrity. Matthew 19 verse 16. Once again, a story you all know. Let's look at it in the light of why Jesus says what he says.

Now behold, what came and said to him, good teacher, what good things shall I do that I may have eternal life? Jesus says to him, why do you call me good? No one is good but one, and that is God. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments. Jesus says, okay, let's start with keeping the commandments. He starts with basically, you really don't know what goodness is.

But that's okay. Let's start with keeping the commandments. And he said to him, which once? Why would he say that? Remember, okay, there's 613. I mean, does that mean, which once? Do I start with wearing tassels? Do I start with cutting my beard a certain way? I mean, where do I start with all the Levi's? I tend to get their hair cut every 30 days. So do I have to get a haircut every 30 days? What do we start with here? And Jesus said, you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear falls witness, honor your mother and your father, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Okay, now let's just start with those. And the young man said to him, all these things I have kept from my youth, what do I still lack? Now, Jesus didn't say to him, what do you mean? You're deluded. You've never done those things. He probably had done those things.

He had never worshiped an idol. He had only ever worshiped Yahweh. He had probably gone to the temple. He was a Torah-observant Jew. He kept the Holy Days. He kept the Sabbath. He was so careful not to take God's name in vain, he never even said the word Yahweh. Or Yahweh. Or Yehoveh. Or however you want to... There's different ways that everybody says to pronounce it. He never even said it. I want to take his name in vain. He was Aramaic. Or another one of God's names. This young man had never murdered... In the letter of the law... Okay, letter of the law...

He never murdered... He probably never stole anything. But Jesus looked at him and said, You don't have near the integrity that you think you do. You have compartments where God is not allowed to come into. Because notice what he said. Jesus said to him, If you want to be perfect, if you want to be whole, if you want to come together here in holiness, go sell what you have and give it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven and come follow me.

This young man is offered a chance to become a disciple of Jesus Christ. From one of his inner circle... 13 instead of 12. He makes you offered by Christ, Come follow me. You've got a lot of things right here, but you know, you have compartments. You have to open up to God. Open up those compartments so you can come follow me. We know the story, verse 22. When a young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful for he had great possessions. God could touch every aspect of his life, but not his money.

Not his money. You know, when we talk about money, there's people who... I know people who come to church for years, but they never tithe. When I get enough money, I'll tithe. They'll never have enough money in the time. We tithe because we obey God, or we don't tithe. Or I'll be generous when. I'll help others win. The amazing thing about you and me is what we do. We take and we build compartments in our lives. And men, we do this more than women. We have an ability to do that.

One of the great strengths of men is the ability... Have you ever seen the... There was a YouTube years ago. A marriage counselor who gave a picture of what a man's brain looks like and what a woman's brain looks like. And a man's brain looked like little boxes. And a woman's looked like a bowl of spaghetti. Now, there is some truth in that. Part of it has to do with the way we're wired. We're wired just slightly different. It's not much. It's enough to make a major difference. Men, for the most part, and we're talking general sense, we can compartmentalize into something very...

You know, very shut-out everything else. Women have a hard time doing that because they find the connections with everything. Our men will cut off the connections and zero in on what we're doing. Now, women, you compartmentalize too, but it's just a little harder for you to do it. But we all compartmentalize, but there's just so many connections that women make with things. So I can tell my wife, I wasn't ignoring you.

I was watching the football game, and I was zeroed in on that. I was in a compartment, okay? And here was my experience. Ehhhhhhhhh... What do you think? I think they're going to score. Now, get my attention, so I move from this compartment to this one, and I'm just fine. Get my attention. When you get a break, can I talk to you? Oh, yeah. What do you want? You start, I mean, I just got to move from that compartment to another. We all do this as human beings.

It's just men can do it sometimes much more dramatically than women. What happens when we compartmentalize our Christianity? See, we're not a whole person. We're fragmented. I've dealt with people who could commit adultery, have an affair on the side. Yet with a man with his wife and his children, it seems like the perfect husband and father. And then he goes with her, and he forgets his wife and children while he's with her. Then he leaves her, comes back, and he lives a double life. People do that all the time.

They live double lives. Or one of my favorites is, business is business. A person is basically honest, an honest person. But when it comes to business, they'll stab you in the back every time with them, because they have two different sets of honesty. Because business is a game, you see. Whether in the business box, it's a game, whether I win or lose. And if I win or lose, that's what's important. So they'll actually do things dishonestly that they would never do in their private life.

That's fragmentation of our thinking. We do it in sports all the time. You know, you see people cheat all the time. They wouldn't do whatever cheats anything else. Or games. I know one time they could not play, I'm trying to remember when we played, spades without cheating. She had to win. Now that's a little thing, but is it? It's a fragmentation of the way we think. See, we're much more fragmentized than we think. We compartmentalize much more than we realize.

And that's why we sin sometimes, even knowing that it's wrong. Why do we sin sometimes knowing it's wrong? Why does a person take the drink when they know they shouldn't? Why do we lose our temper when we know we shouldn't? Something is yelling in our brain, don't do that, usually it's God's spirit. And we do it anyways. Why? Because we move from one compartment to the other, and we live in that compartment. But that's a fragmented person.

And the more fragmented we are, the less ability we have to have a relationship with God, and the more unhappy we are, the more stressed we are, the more out of sync we are with ourselves, with anything else around us. So we fragment, and we're not a whole person. We're not a person of integrity. We have no spiritual integrity. The more oneness or wholeness that you and I experience with God and with His Word, the more healthy we'll be spiritually, mentally, and emotionally. And I want to stress the word healthy, because life isn't just about having fun or being happy. Those are important things, and everybody should be happy, and everybody should have fun. But healthy is more important.

I mean, if you say, I like eating candy, it makes me happy, and I eat three pounds of candy, you will become unhealthy, right? So healthy determines what you do, what you have. And we're the love God with all of our heart, all of our body, all of our soul, and all of our strength.

What are we holding back? What are we compartmentalizing? What are we fragmented and saying, God, you can't touch that? You can't go there, but I'll do everything else. I love my neighbor, I won't steal, I won't murder, I won't lie, but you can't go there. You can't go to my marriage. I watch people do that, too. Sorry, God, you can't come into my marriage.

What do we do? Where are we compartmentalizing? When you do, like I said, you're not a happy person. You're a frustrated person, and you're a stressed out person. Developing spiritual integrity. First thing, Psalm 118. Psalm 118. Verse 1. Here's the first thing you have to do if you say, okay, I'm going to take some steps here towards personal integrity, developing personal integrity. Where do I start with? David writes, verse 1, Blessed are the undefiled in the way who walk in the law of the Lord, blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek him with the whole heart.

We have to go back to what Jesus said. This is the greatest commandment.

You and I have to go to God and say, break down the barriers, break down the compartments. I wish to seek you with everything I am. How can you love God with all your soul until you seek him with all your soul? How can you love God with all your mind until you seek him with all your mind? We have to go seek him first, because you and I can't do it. I can't make yourself whole. I can't make myself whole. It's not possible. God makes us whole. We were born incomplete. We were born incomplete. So you have to seek God's completeness. You have to go ask for it. You have to fast about it. You have to pray about it. You have to search the Scripture. You have to talk about it.

It has to be with everything you have. Your whole heart. You have to meet it. And you have to look and say, is there some area that I'm not letting God into? Is there some area I'm saying, no, you can't have that part of my life? Then we've got to ask you to break down those walls. It's not easy. It's not easy. It takes time. It takes effort. Look at James 1. James 1.

Verse 2. Now we've read this many times. And once again, it's the Scripture that we all know very well. And usually we're talking about faith. Usually we're talking about patience. I want to zero in on something else here. My brother encountered all joy when you fall into various trials. Being happy when bad things are happening? Boy, James is a man. I just want to stop there. I don't want to read anything else other than James. Who gives that kind of advice? But here's why. You have to see how he concludes that. Knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. Or endurance. You're able to persevere. That patience have its perfect work. That you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. You may become complete, whole. This is what God's doing. Now we know from this, what he just said here, that moving from being a fragmented person to a complete person is hard.

It's difficult. It's never easy. So you just have to understand this is going to be difficult. The option is to stay a fragmented person, which is even worse. Staying a fragmented person is worse than the work and commitment to becoming a whole person. It's worse. But if you're going to be mentally healthy, if you're going to be spiritually healthy, the more complete we are, in God's sense, in our oneness with God, the more healthy we are. And we're actually able to deal with the difficulties of life. Let's go back to... Well, by the way, you know, what Jesus said, or what Peter said, that by his stripes we are healed. That's not just for our physical healing.

That's for every kind of healing. The ultimate healing is to be one with God. David told me we'll talk about that, right? But not too long, we're going to be celebrating a time where pictures being at one with God hold us. No fragmentation. When you're one with God in that resurrection, there's no fragmentation left in here. We're at one with God. I keep imagining what that must be like. He's going to be a whole lot better than this. He's going to be a whole lot better than this. At least we can learn it now.

It's his desire to make us whole. So let's go back to Stephen Carter's three steps of integrity. I'm going to look at these in terms of just three scriptures. Discerning what is right and wrong. Spiritual integrity comes from God's Spirit and His Word. We have to be interacting with His Word. We have to be interacting with God's Spirit.

Second Chronicles. It is possible, and for a lot of second and third generations, Christians, we discern what is right and wrong because it's our culture, but we're still fragmented. We don't know why.

We just do it. We're in a great danger. It's like the people who keep Christmas, and then they're shocked to find out, well, you know, Jesus wasn't born on December 25th. They're shocked.

Why did they do it all those years? Why did people still do it after they find out? Most people now know that Jesus wasn't born on December 25th. It used to be shocking when we told people that. Most people now know. Why did He do it? It's what they know. It's what they do. Most people get it. We get rid of this life. We never question what we do. We just do it.

Well, we have to discern right from wrong, but sometimes we get so comfortable with, oh, this is right. I know this. That we don't know how we got there. If we don't know how we get there, we face a problem that will happen at some point. Look here. 2 Chronicles 24. Joash, Joash is king of Judah. Joash was seven years old when he became king, and he reigns 40 years in Jerusalem.

His mother's name was Zibiah of Beersheba. Zibiah. You don't hear Zibiah too much, you know, right? I always tried to get my wife to name our kids weird names.

Joash did what was right in the sight of the Lord all the days of Jehoedah the priest. So, Jehoedah the priest follows God. You can read the couple chapters before here. So, Jehoedah is following God, and he has great influence on Joash. And Joash, born into a society that believed in God, they had a temple, right? Every Sabbath, Joash would have gone to the temple and watched them do the sacrifices to God.

Joash's king would have been required to read Genesis, Exodus, and Linux, the Numbers, and Deuteronomy as part of his training to be king. He would be required to do that. So, it was what he knew. But Joash never internalized it so that it became who he was. And it came who he was. So, something interesting happens in verse 1217.

Now, after the death of Jehoedah, the leaders of Judah came and bowed down to the king, and the king listened to them. Therefore, they left the house of the Lord, the God of their fathers, and served wood-images and idols. And wrath came upon Judah and Jerusalem because of their trespass. Yet he, speaking of God, sent prophets to them to bring them back to the Lord. And they testified against them, but they would not listen. Then the Spirit of God came upon Zechariah, the son of Jehoedah, the priest, who stood above the people and said to them, Thus says God, Why do you transgress the commandments of the Lord so that you cannot prosper? Because you are forsaken the Lord, he has forsaken you. Now, here's a king that for very many years, especially when he was young, obeyed God.

But his compartments, he had too many compartments, and eventually those compartments became his focus. And he ended up, the latter part of his reign as king, was a whole lot worse than the first part. And judgment came upon Judah because of what had happened.

Discerning right and wrong, you and I need to know why we make our decisions the way we do. We need to know why. It's not just a matter of, oh, I keep the Holy Days because of such and such. But if you don't know why from the Scripture, give me ten minutes with you. I might be able to convince you not to keep the Holy Days. Because the arguments against them are pretty logical, especially if you pull three or four Scriptures out and don't go to the other ones. Why? How do we actually discern if we don't know why? Scripturally, what God is saying. Secondly, acting upon what you have discerned, even at personal cost.

The first thing I think of here in Daniel was Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They were told to worship an idol. They refused to do so. Now, that's at great personal cost. Right? They were going to be thrown into a furnace and die a horrible death. And that's what's going to happen to them.

And what I find interesting is the depth of the answer as complete persons. I could have come up with a hundred reasons why I should bow down to the idol. Because God doesn't want me to die. Who's going to take care of His people if I die? How can I worship God if I die? How can I take care of my family if I die? Surely God doesn't want me to abandon my wife and children. Right? My grandkids need a grandfather. I can give up on a hundred reasons why. I'll just pretend to do it. No, no, I'm not really doing it. I'll bow down for the idol and actually pray to God. There you go.

That's fragmented thinking. See, I'm an expert at fragmented thinking. You don't have anything over on me, okay, when it comes to this. Because I'm an expert at it. I get reasoned out every wrong thing you come up with. Just like you can.

Daniel 3.

Daniel 3. Daniel 3. verse 16. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, O, Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. We're not even going to give you the reasons why you would understand them anyways. These are complete people talking here.

We know why. Those reasons are going to motivate our actions no matter what the personal cost.

If that is the case, in other words, that they're going to throw them into this fiery furnace, our God who we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace. And He will deliver us from your hand, O king. But if not, if God decides to let us die, let it be known to you, O king, that we do not serve your gods, nor will we worship the gold image which you have set up. Remember, we know they were saved. At this point, they did not know whether they were going to be saved or not. They were scared to death. These were three men standing there without fear. They didn't want to die, and they sure didn't want to die that way. Who is the burden of death? If I were to be a martyr, which I don't want to be because I'm basically a coward, but if I were to be a martyr, I would have 12 guys that are expert shots to shoot me in the heart all at the same time. Yeah, just get this over with. I want to go to be thrown in a fire. Right?

Their answers, their actions are based on, we know what God wants. So therefore, we do. That's a whole person. That's a whole person. Now we know that God did save them. But remember, they did not know that. The third point, he says, is saying openly that you're acting on your understanding of right wrong. Now, what's interesting about saying openly is that if you're wrong, someone can bring out an argument to show you where you're wrong, and you work backwards through the process, and you change what you believe is right wrong.

In other words, if you're doing something wrong, you think it's right, you take an action, now you're defending it. And someone says, let me show you from the Scripture, and you see what God wants, you can work back through the process. That's the thing about integrity. You can work through the process to constantly close up these compartments, like more and more of a whole person. I don't mean... Obviously, we work in compartments when we're concentrating. I'm amazed at people who sow. We need some women in Texas who made these big quilts, and the amount of time and concentration.

At that point, they have to be in a compartment to do that. That's an amazing thing. We have to do that for concentration purposes, not for moral purposes, and not in our relationship with God. They can't be compartments there. So we have to be able to say it. Mark 8. Mark 8, verse 34. Jesus calls the people to Himself, with His disciples also, and He says to them, I want you to think about this in terms of being able to openly state and discuss when is the right time.

Wisdom is when you do this or not, but there's a time to openly defend your decisions, which you believe is right and wrong, and your actions, because that's part of what integrity is. Wherever desires to come after Me, He let Him deny Himself, take up His cross and follow Me. Deny Yourself. In other words, we have to give up part of ourselves to follow God. Why are we holding back?

Because all of us, one way or another, is holding back something. Why are we holding back? Do we have to give up? For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for My name's sake or for My sake, and the Gospels will save it.

For what will the prophet abat it? He gains the whole world who loses his own soul or loses his own life. What will a man give in exchange for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, and this adulterous and sinful generation of Him, the Son of Man also will be ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father with the Holy Angels.

Are we ashamed sometimes of Jesus Christ? Are we ashamed of what we believe? Interesting. I had an interesting experience this week, but I went again and gave in to because I wanted to see what these men would do. I was limping a little bit, so I asked me if I was limping today. I had them from playing sports.

I don't have any cartilage left in either of my knees, and I had two big screws in one of them. I was limping. It came out of a store, and it came out. I'm living along a little bit. These two young men came up and said, We could tell that you're limping. They said, Can we pray for you? Sure. The right doubt there in front of the store, they prayed. They didn't ask God to please heal me. They said, Thank you. Walked away. I looked at my wife and I said, Would we be ashamed to do that?

I'm not saying we all should go out and pray for everybody. But you understand the point. They had no fear and no shame. They saw someone they thought was in need and came and said, Can I pray for you? Now, I'm not going to go do that, but I wonder how many times we walk up to each other in the family of God and say, I'll pray for you. Or will you pray for me? How many times do we have a time when we should say something and we don't?

Well, we should make a stand and we don't. Now, there's no use to make a useless stand for a useless reason. But there are times when we can't hide our light in our bushes. Jesus said that. To be a person of integrity means there are times you stand out there in the darkness and you let your light show. Here's the issue. If you really are a person of integrity, you could try not to do that. It will still happen. You can't help it. Because the more we're at one with God, the more that shines out and you can't...

Everybody at work is going to say, I don't know what's in the value. Your religion is a little weird, but there's something about you that's different. They know what it is. Your neighbors, where do you go every Saturday? The church. Oh. You know, but you can't hide it. We cannot be ashamed of who we are in this adulterous generation. Because I don't want to stand before Jesus Christ and have him say, you know, Gary, I'm a little bit ashamed of you. I don't want that to happen. Can you imagine that?

Can you imagine you're in the resurrection? It's like, Gary, there's Christ. And you say, oh, good, introduce me to the Father. And he says, yeah, but you know what? I'm a little ashamed of you. That'd be horrible. But are we ashamed of him? So you say, okay. I get this. I want to be whole. I don't want to have these compartments in my life. I want to have integrity. Where do I start? I want to give you a series of questions. I want you to write them down. I'm going to do a head down.

I thought, no, I want you to write them down. Because the work of writing them down actually does something with your brain. Okay? Powerpoint's great at times, and there's other times that short-circuit the brain. It makes it too easy, in other words. Here's some questions. Ask yourself this week. Ask yourself and pray about this. And see what, in an honest way, if you write these down, you can even write down your own answers. How often do I see God's will in prayer and Bible study in making personal decisions?

How often do I see God's will in prayer and Bible study in making personal decisions? Do I? Yeah, I do that. Okay. How well do I treat people from whom I can receive nothing? How well do I treat people who can't give me anything? Who I don't get any benefit from. I don't even have a relationship with. How well do I treat them? Do I role play with the people I'm with? In other words, do you have veneer? It's easy for us to do sometimes in church. We all come to church and basically put our best foot forward, and we should.

It's like I tell new people. When new people come to church, I tell them, if you're looking for the perfect church, don't come to our church. You'll think we're perfect, and then you'll stick around for six months and find out we're not.

We're just a bunch of imperfect people trying to follow God. And you know, when I started doing that years ago, I thought, oh, people stop. They won't come now. Everybody says, oh, good, thank you. I was so worried I'd go there and stick out because I'm not perfect.

Oh, no, you'll fit right in. Am I the same person in the public as I am when I'm alone? Am I the same person in public as I am when I'm alone? Do I quickly admit what I'm wrong? Here's a tough one. Okay. I don't have a number. I have to admit that I'm wrong. So, I quickly admit I'm wrong. Do I quickly admit what I'm wrong? That's what's sort of tough. Do I put God's good for others ahead of my personal good?

Do I put God's good for other people ahead of my personal good? What is God's good for others? That one's a really interesting question. Do I put God's good for others above my personal good? Do I have unchanging standards for moral decisions, or do circumstances make my choices?

Do I make the difficult decisions, even at personal cost? This is hard sometimes for new people or young people to understand. When we talk about consequences all the time, doing the right thing sometimes has a bad consequence in the short term. It does. Ask Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Doing the right thing sometimes has a short-term consequence that's bad. The long-term consequence is always good.

It's the opposite for bad things. Bad things many times have a short-term good consequence. The long-term is bad. When I have something to say about people, do I talk to them or about them? When I have something to say about people, do I go to them or do I talk to others about them? Here's something I find I've thought of my life that's helped.

Am I accountable to at least one other person for what I think, say, and do? I have found in my life I find a few people that I've gone to them when I have an issue and I make them hold me accountable.

Usually it's been older ministers that I have a great respect for who have no problem saying, You know, Gary, that's stupid. Oh, good thanks. Sometimes you just need clarity, right? Come on, that's dumb. Come on. Gary, you're running through emotions here. You're not thinking this through. Well, let's look at what the Bible says. I always know I'm in trouble when the people I hold accountable say that.

But it has kept me from numerous bad decisions in my life. I have certain people I hold myself accountable to that I just go and say, Okay, here's where I am.

Can't help me work this room.

Do you have someone, anyone, that you're held accountable to?

So I don't even hold accountable to anybody. Just God.

Well, you know, I can just only accountable to God.

Usually by the time the problem is big enough, he's coming down on you like a sledgehammer because he's been yelling at you for so long you don't listen.

Having another person work you through it is a whole lot easier. Let God work through that person.

Now, if you answered to the negative in any of these questions, you now have a Bible study.

If there was any negative answer to any of these questions, go look up what the Bible said. Get out your concordance and look out what the Bible says on that subject.

Find out how to be a person who's complete in that area.

I don't know how to have integrity.

I just think George Washington Carver put it so well. Vineyard isn't worth anything.

Not when it comes to a person. It can't only be the furniture or something, but it doesn't with a person.

All human beings are incomplete. Remember that.

You and I need God's Spirit and God's teaching to become whole. It is a long, hard process. You don't become a whole person overnight, and it's not easy.

But life is only worth living for eternity in oneness with God.

Be whole.

That's the only way life for eternity is worth living.

Stability and purpose in this life comes from fulfilling what God has created you to become.

Maybe He's becoming the real person you're supposed to be. It's about being real. Real is about being whole.

No veneer, a complete person, a son or daughter of God, that's what you're here for.

Just learn how to become that. In other words, a person of spiritual integrity.