Psalm 101. I said last week we were going to
do the whole psalm, and we made it through one
verse. So I'm not going to say we'll do the whole
psalm tonight. We won't. But we might finish
it at some point. Psalm 101. We'll read verse
1 and verse 2, and then we'll pray. I will sing
of faithful love and justice. I will sing praise
to you, Lord. I will pay attention to the way
of integrity. When will you come to me? I will
live with a heart of integrity in my house. Let's
pray. God, we come to you. We thank you for your
good word. And I pray, dear Lord, that you would
help us to be men and women of integrity. that
we would have the same heart as David here, that
we would seek you, that we would long for you,
that we would desire to walk for you and not
walk in the ways of the world. I pray that your
Holy Spirit would be among us tonight, God. I
pray that these couple of little verses we look
at would just, we'd get something from them.
We'd grow in you. I pray, God, that you would
hide me behind the cross, dear Lord, that I would
preach and teach in a way that brings glory and
honor to you tonight. And I ask these things
in Jesus' name. Amen. We see that this psalm,
we talked about it a little bit last week in
this first verse. This is a praise to the Lord.
David here is praising God. He's praising God
for his faithful love, for his justice. We talked
about what those things meant last week. We won't
go back into that again. But really when we get
to verse 2, we begin to see kind of what the
main theme of Psalm 101 is. And that is integrity.
What does David say? He says, I will pay attention
to the way of integrity. He says it again at
the end of the verse. I will live with a heart
of integrity in my house. What does it mean to
be a man or a woman of integrity? Well, integrity
is doing the right thing. It's doing the right
thing. But maybe a better definition of integrity
is doing the right thing when nobody's looking.
That's really what integrity is because we'll
all do the right thing when somebody's looking,
right? Somebody's looking and you know what you're
supposed to do, you're probably going to do it.
But what do you do behind closed doors when nobody's
watching? Say it's your job if you still work
or maybe in the past. When the boss is there,
it seems like people work a little harder than
when he's not there. When the boss is not there,
people may lollygag, people may take a few more
breaks, but when the boss comes in, guess what?
Things change. Everybody sits up straight in
their chair, and the breaks cut down, and the
bathroom breaks cut down, and the work increases
a little bit, right? And that's kind of what
we are tempted to do, and if we're honest, we've
probably all done that some in our work. We kind
of slack. But integrity is doing the right thing
even when nobody's watching. Now, we can sit
in this room tonight. We're going to do the right
thing. Ain't none of us going to say nothing
off the wall, say nothing crazy. Everything's
going to be good. We're not going to be looking
at nothing that's inappropriate on our phones.
But what are we going to do tonight when we go
home when nobody's watching? What are we going
to say? What kind of mouths are going to, I mean,
words are going to come from our mouth? What
kind of things are we going to be? Bringing in
to our body, are our eyes going to see, are our
ears going to hear? What kind of thoughts are
going to run through our mind? Oh, we got a good
attitude here. We smile. Everything's good. How
you doing, brother? Good to see y 'all. I hope
you're having a good night. But then, does our
attitude change when we leave? If we're a man
or a woman of integrity, we'll be the same when
nobody's looking as we are when people are looking.
And that's what David desires to be. He desires
to be a man of integrity. A man who says, I have
done the right thing. That should be our desire.
That when we get to the end of the day every
day, that we can look back at our day without
any regrets. That we can know that we've done
the right thing. That we've done what we're supposed
to do. And here's some cool thing about it right
here. When we do what we're supposed to do, we'll
sleep a lot better at night. Some people have
trouble sleeping at night. Me too sometimes.
And sometimes I wonder maybe the reason why I
have trouble sleeping is maybe because of something
I've done or hadn't done. Sometimes there's stuff
going on in our life that's not right and we
don't have any rest in our soul because we haven't
been men and women of integrity. But David desires
to be that here. He's praising the Lord. He says,
God, I praise your faithful love. I praise your
justice. God, I rejoice in you. and I desire
to be a man of integrity for you, Lord, not just
for me, but for all in my house, so that I'd
be a man of integrity, and that my wife would
see that, and that my children would see that,
and that my friends would see that, and that
my community would see that, and that his whole
kingdom that he was king of would see that he
was a man of integrity. Now, he had the desire
to be a man of integrity, but sadly, he was not
always a man of integrity. It'd be great if we
looked through the pages of Scripture and David
was what he wanted to be, but he wasn't. There's
plenty of times where David did not do the right
thing, and neither do we. We may genuinely have
that desire to be a man or a woman of integrity,
but sometimes we fail, and perhaps we need to
echo David's words here in the middle of verse
2. When will you come to me? Lord, I need you.
Lord, when will you come to me? God, I want to
be a man of integrity. I want to be a woman of
integrity. God, I need your help to do that.
And that's our desire and that should be what
we strive for. But we also know that we fail.
But praise the Lord, there was a better king
that was coming. Now David started a kingship
way back when he was appointed king. And guess
who was eventually going to come through the
line of David? It was going to be Jesus Christ,
the King of kings and the Lord of lords. One
who could be a man of perfect integrity. So praise
God. We seek to live for Him. We seek to do what
is right. And sometimes we fail. And that's not
an excuse. We shouldn't just say, oh, I failed.
It's okay, you know. No, we're going to fail,
but we should never be okay with that. Our sin
and our failures, they bring about some burden
on us. But praise the Lord, Jesus Christ can
take that burden. That even though that we fail,
Jesus Christ never did. And so we need to seek
in our life to be men and women of integrity.
We want to do the right thing. You might have
had some opportunities today to do the right
thing and you didn't do it. You're probably going
to have some opportunities tomorrow to do the
right thing. Are you going to do it? Are you
going to do what God wants you to do? Are you
going to do what's right or are you going to
slack? Got the opportunity in front of all of
these people, man and woman of integrity. What
about when you leave this place? If you just
do the right thing when people are watching,
you are not a man or a woman of integrity. You
are a hypocrite. Jesus talks about this very
idea at the end of Matthew chapter 24. He talks
about those who were supposed to be doing the
master's work, and the master delayed his coming.
And so instead of being diligent, and when the
master would find the worker at work, instead
the worker was out living for himself. And then
the master comes back, and what's happening?
The worker... is not being a man of integrity.
And Jesus says, you are a hypocrite. So what
about us? Are we doing the Lord's work? The Lord's
always watching. I don't see what you do. You
don't see what I do. But the Lord sees what all
of us do. And we need to remember that. And that
needs to be what drives us to Do what is right
in our life. And the choices we make and the
things we do and the way that we treat people,
we need to do it with integrity. Let's pray.
God, we thank you for this simple word, but a
powerful command it is to us, dear Lord, and
help us to look at our own life because maybe
there are some areas in our life where we have
not been men and women of integrity. Maybe...
Maybe we are hypocritical in some way, dear Lord.
Maybe we look good when we come up here, but
maybe behind closed doors we know our life is
a wreck and we need to change the way we act,
change the way we treat others, change the way
we speak, change the things that we look at,
change the things that we do. Help us to be those
who do what is right, dear Lord, that we would
seek your word to know what is right. Your Holy
Spirit would lead us, that we would follow those
convictions of the Holy Spirit, God. We know
we fail, and we don't want to fail. But I pray
that you help us to have that desire to do what
is right. And we pray that you'd give us grace
when we fail and strengthen us to help us grow
in those times through Jesus Christ. We thank
you that he was a man of perfect integrity, and
so it is him we seek now. And I ask these things
in Jesus' name. Amen.