Sermons
Integrity Matters
January 24, 2021
Ministry:
- Sunday Morning
Speaker:
- Jeff Crotts
Text: Matthew 5:33-5:37
Series:
- Matthew
One president has taken the place of another and what is the deepest question regarding either the former or latter?
- Pragmatic skill to get something done?
- Curing the virus? The economy? The wall? Solving racism?
The core issue of leadership always comes down to one single thing.
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- Is this leader telling the truth?
- Will this leader tell the truth?
- Always the issue.
Our former president decried many things but one thing we heard repeatedly was that mainstream news media was “fake news.”
- Calling into question the integrity of mainstream media.
- “The art of lying” whether in news or politics.
Years ago, the Chaplain of the Kansas Senate prayed:
Omniscient Father: Help us to know who is telling the truth. One side tells us one thing, and the other just the opposite. And if neither side is telling the truth, we would like to know that, too. And if each side is telling half the truth, give us the wisdom to put the right halves together. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Suffice it to say, the greatest attribute of a leader is integrity.
- Someone who is the same on the inside as they are on the outside.
- Leadership is won and lost on this single factor.
- Respect is gained and maintained by integrity.
- Also quickly lost with compromise.
Bible history shows examples of men and women known for integrity:
Abel, Enoch, Joseph, Daniel, Paul, Ruth, Esther, Abigail, Mary, Phoebe, Lois, Eunice.
- Others who held a high standard of integrity but were also remembered by failures that besmirched their records:
Noah, Job, Abraham, Moses, David, Peter, Sarah, Rebecca, Martha, Euodia, and Syntyche.
In truth, no one’s integrity is perfect except Christ.
- But in principle, when integrity is lost, influence is undermined.
1 Timothy 3:2 says, “Therefore an overseer must be above reproach.”
Does this mean spiritual leaders are perfect?
- No! Neither does not mean spiritual leaders are left unaccountable.
- The leader’s reputation affects his ability to serve.
- “It is not the perfection of his life but the direction” that qualifies a leader.
Scandals have checker the office of leadership.
- Four years ago, prior to being elected, our former president was exposed by a secretly recorded interaction where he had to apologize for what he said, on the highest stage.
- He dumbed it down as, “Locker room talk.”
- Scandals from previous presidents numb us to what integrity should be.
- It is easy to look the other way in view of how dramatic politics have become!
Well-known pastors have likewise fallen into moral or financial compromise.
- Anger or bullying or addictions undermine people’s trust.
- Not managing the homelife.
- The wife or children who leave the faith.
- The recent trend of pastors who lose trust, being untreatable.
- Compromised leaders usually have been sliding down on a slippery slope for a long time.
- Rather than a dramatic fall from the top.
- Their descent is slow and secret.
- Their fall is not a far fall.
- He takes his final step off the last rung of his ladder.
- Having been deaf for a long time.
Society’s compromise creates this culture of distrust.
- A recent article shows trends in millennials and prenuptial agreements.
- Used to marry in their early ’20s; now wait until at least their 30’s and even 40’s.
- New averages.
- Career driven singles are protective to not put assets at risk.
- Marriage, may or may not work out.
- Signing a contract like this is like pre-divorce papers.
- Creating risk by sowing the seed of doubt that rupture is a foregone conclusion.
- Rationalized as an insurance policy when things go wrong.
Christians fly in the face of all this culture.
- Uncompromising character begs inquiry to its source of power!
- The only source is Jesus.
- The perfect model of integrity.
- If you are like me, you are fed up with compromise.
- An effective witness lives by Jesus as the source of integrity.
How are we to tap into this source?
The power of integrity comes by taking two measures
1. Stripping away your false securities (vv. 33-36)
Like links in a chain, Jesus confronts people using God’s Law as a cover-up for sin.
- Pharisees were the experts:
- Using “you shall not kill” as cover for anger.
- Using “you shall not commit adultery” as cover for lust and coveting.
- Using “you may divorce” as simple rules to sinfully break what God established.
- Jesus ties together 3 particular sins: “lustful intent” (v. 28) with “easy divorce” with “superficial oaths.”
Rabbis masking a lack of spiritual integrity with religion, and if not careful, we will do the same.
Verse 33 is not a direct quotation from the Old Testament, but an allusion to several passages (cff. Ex. 20:7; Lev. 19:12; Num. 30:2; Dt. 23:21-24).
ESV Exodus 20:7 “You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.
ESV Leviticus 19:12 You shall not swear by my name falsely, and so profane the name of your God: I am the LORD.
ESV Deuteronomy 23:21-24 “If you make a vow to the LORD your God, you shall not delay fulfilling it, for the LORD your God will surely require it of you, and you will be guilty of sin. 22 But if you refrain from vowing, you will not be guilty of sin.23 You shall be careful to do what has passed your lips, for you have voluntarily vowed to the LORD your God what you have promised with your mouth.24 “If you go into your neighbor’s vineyard, you may eat your fill of grapes, as many as you wish, but you shall not put any in your bag.
Here Jesus is now saying, “Do not swear at all” (v. 34).
“What does Jesus actually mean?”
- Jesus is not forbidding a believer from making a promise.
- Making a promise to God is not presumptuous.
- Some believe you are never to take public oaths.
- In court or like this past week’s inauguration.
- The Anabaptists, Moravians, and Quakers held this position.
- George Fox (founder of the Quakers) was sentenced to prison refusing to swear over a Bible that he would tell the truth.
“You have given me a book here to kiss and to swear on, and this book which ye have given me to kiss says, ‘Kiss the Son,’ and the Son says in this book, ‘Swear not at all.’ I say as the book says, and yet ye imprison me; how chance ye do not imprison the book for saying so?”
- This interpretation is taken too literally – not answering what God would have us do based on the heart.
We need to remember the point is integrity not functional but spiritual.
- Jesus is not forbidding taking an oath, but instead commands integrity when you do!
- God himself makes promises.
- You could say, the Lord swears by himself!
ESV Genesis 9:11 I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.”
ESV Luke 1:67-76 And his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied, saying, 68 “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people69 and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David,70 as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,71 that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us;72 to show the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant,73 the oath that he swore to our father Abraham, to grant us74 that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear,75 in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.76 And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways
ESV Hebrews 6:15-18 And thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the promise. 16 For people swear by something greater than themselves, and in all their disputes an oath is final for confirmation.17 So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath,18 so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us.
ESV Deuteronomy 10:20 You shall fear the LORD your God. You shall serve him and hold fast to him, and by his name you shall swear.
Paul made declarations – that he told the truth – putting his character on the line before God if he did not!
ESV Romans 1:9 For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I mention you
ESV Romans 9:1-3 I am speaking the truth in Christ–I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit–2 that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh.
ESV 1 Thessalonians 2:5 For we never came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed–God is witness.
- This is the truest accountability!
- Person to person accountability means you can lie.
- You cannot lie to God.
- God is a better lie detector test.
Verse 33 Elevates follow through as if you can equate integrity by being a “getter-doner!”
- By-passing the heart.
- Jesus again cites the Rabbi’s saying:
“Again, you have heard that it was said to those of old…” (v. 33)
- Then exposes their false-corrective – the cover for making promises never someone never intends to keep.
“….but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn” (v. 33).
Verses 34-35 is Jesus’ corrective stripping away false securities.
“But I say to you, ‘Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem for it is the city of the great King” (vv. 34-35).
The Bible gives examples of good “oaths” and bad “oaths.”
Hannah:
ESV 1 Samuel 1:11 And she vowed a vow and said, “O LORD of hosts, if you will indeed look on the affliction of your servant and remember me and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a son, then I will give him to the LORD all the days of his life, and no razor shall touch his head.”
Jephthah:
ESV Judges 11:30-31 And Jephthah made a vow to the LORD and said, “If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, 31 then whatever comes out from the doors of my house to meet me when I return in peace from the Ammonites shall be the LORD’s, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.”
Jesus confronts people playing games, saying they will do one thing when they are going to do another.
- We have grown up in this culture – faking follow through – talking a Big Game.
Like children who play-swearing games where like a dare will swear to do something on their mother’s health. Or, someone’s grave!
- For the Rabbi, the answer was to force follow through.
- “This is as good as religion can take you.”
Jesus goes to the heart – quelling games by drawing accountability upward to God!
- Christ calls out the practice of “swearing falsely” by making oaths according to something less than God.
- The problem was not with making an oath but making an oath someone never intended to keep.
- False accountability or False Alibis to appear spiritual.
As if beginning from the view of a satellite or space station, someone swears by “heaven” and closer by “earth” and then closer, “Jerusalem” and then closer than that, “your head.”
I never appreciate when someone begins a program and does not finish.
- Blaming employers for what they did not finish.
- Faking spirituality as spiritual leader – “This is Worse” – “This is Dangerous!”
- Duplicity is dangerous for him and his hearers.
- Jesus exposes how perilous these false oaths really are for people.
- This is Jesus’ corrective:
- You say your swearing to your integrity “by heaven” guess what, heaven is where God lives, “it is the throne of God.” (v. 34).
- You swear “by earth” but earth “is his footstool” (v. 35), meaning God is here too!
- You want to sound sanctified swearing “by Jerusalem” (v. 35) as if you are not running from God, using God for cover, this backfires because “it is the city of the great King” (v. 35).
- God actually rules there too!
- There is no escaping God’s accountability.
Finally, you take matters into your own hands saying, I will “take an oath by [my] head” (v. 36).
- I will sacrifice my health or life to ensure what I say I will do, I will do!
- Jesus corrects this kind of pervasive false trust with God’s sovereignty.
- This example comes all the way down to a person’s hair follicle.
- Precision sovereignty over the color of someone’s single hair, “one hair white or black” (v. 36).
God has no separate categories secular and sacred in terms of his creation.
- He is present overall.
William Barclay said: “Here is a great eternal truth. Life cannot be divided into compartments, in some of which God is involved and in others of which he is not involved…a language in the Church and another kind of language in the shipyard or the factory or the office…”
This was the same rebuke Jesus gives later directly to the Pharisees:
ESV Matthew 23:16-22 “Woe to you, blind guides, who say, ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it is nothing, but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.’ 17 You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the temple that has made the gold sacred?18 And you say, ‘If anyone swears by the altar, it is nothing, but if anyone swears by the gift that is on the altar, he is bound by his oath.’19 You blind men! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred?20 So whoever swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it.21 And whoever swears by the temple swears by it and by him who dwells in it.22 And whoever swears by heaven swears by the throne of God and by him who sits upon it.
You cannot swear indirectly and get away with it – why lie detectors require:
“yes or no” answers.
I used to say the biggest public scandal in my lifetime was when former president Bill Clinton lies under oath with the quotable quip, “It depends on what your definition of is is.”
However, now this has its rivals.
There are no shades of lying.
- A half-truth is a whole lie, and a white lie is still a lie.
- God calls us away from cheapening language.
- Using religious language – the name of “God” or “God speak” is wrong.
Helmut Thielicke, “We are saying people are expecting me to lie from the start…counting on my lying, [so] I have to bring up these big guns of oaths…”
2. Anchoring yourself in the only security (v. 37).
The solution is boiling your integrity down to one thing. Christ.
- He sees inside of you.
- Your only absolute lie detector.
- That said, “Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’…” (v. 37).
- When you face a commitment, do not fake yourself into saying one thing when you know you may or may not actually mean it.
- Never make a half-hearted commitment but instead have integrity.
- Be a whole number “Yes” or “No” not a fraction of a “Yes” or “No.”
Do not hide sin.
ESV 2 Corinthians 1:16-20 I wanted to visit you on my way to Macedonia, and to come back to you from Macedonia and have you send me on my way to Judea. 17 Was I vacillating when I wanted to do this? Do I make my plans according to the flesh, ready to say “Yes, yes” and “No, no” at the same time?18 As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been Yes and No.19 For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not Yes and No, but in him it is always Yes.20 For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory.
This is the integrity of a Christian that stands distinct in a world that is corrosive.
We not only stand against a lying world but also a lying adversary.
ESV James 5:12 But above all, my brothers, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, but let your “yes” be yes and your “no” be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation.
This ties back to Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:37. “…anything more than this comes from evil [evil one]” (v. 37).
- The genitive use of “evil” [povnpou] connotes an “evil one” (cf. Matt. 6:13 “deliver us from evil [evil one]”).
- Opposing “the father of lies” (cf. Jn. 8:44).
ESV John 8:44 You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
- The earlier context of John 8 is Jesus confronting the Pharisees:
ESV John 8:32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
- This offends them to the point of murder, to snuff out the truth (cf. John 14:6 “I am the truth”).
ESV John 8:59 So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.
Christians are of God, so we speak the truth.
ESV Ephesians 4:15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ
ESV Numbers 23:19 God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?
ESV Titus 1:1 Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the sake of the faith of God’s elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness, 2 in hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began
Preacher and writer, George Macdonald wrote to his son on December 6, 1878 an admission:
I always try – I think I do – to be truthful. All the same I tell a great many petty lies, e.g. things that mean one thing to myself though another to other people. But I do not think lightly of it. Where I am move often wrong is in tacitly pretending I hear things which I do not, especially jokes and good stories, the point of which I always miss; but, seeing every one laugh, I laugh too, for the sake of not looking a fool. My respect for the world’s opinion is my greatest stumbling block I fear.
This kind of confession, far from being condemning, is the prescription for integrity.
- The temptation to be a people-pleaser is real.
- Making commitments to be loved.
- Integrity is confessing that you laugh along.
- This confession comes from a sensitive conscience that Jesus loves.
- Integrity is built on being whole in our words and commitments.
- Only Jesus is perfect, so we speak and commit in view of his accountability.
“Where does this leave us in view of heaven?”
Remember:
- God cannot and will not break his oath to keep all who are his until heaven.
- His oath is based on himself, not your obedience or disobedience.
- Do not deny God’s oath has made to keep you with your words or actions.
ESV 2 Timothy 1:12 which is why I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that Day what has been entrusted to me.
ESV 2 Timothy 2:11-13 The saying is trustworthy, for: If we have died with him, we will also live with him;
12 if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he also will deny us;13 if we are faithless, he remains faithful– for he cannot deny himself.
ESV Jude 1:24 Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy
- God is the ultimate promise keeper.
In a world that will increasingly be given over to compromise,
The church needs to be the culture of truth.
We stand for truth!