Speaker: Bonnie Sala | Series: Guidelines For Living | This only have I found: God made mankind upright, but men have gone in search of many schemes.  Ecclesiastes 7:29

A man and woman wanted to sneak off for a romantic lunch together, away from the eyes of their colleagues at the office they both worked in.  They picked up a pizza and headed for a nearby park.  When they opened the pizza box, however, they found, not only the pizza, but an envelope full of cash, which the restaurant manager had hidden in the box the day before, for safekeeping.  Fearing that they might be accused of theft, they immediately returned the money.  The owner of the restaurant, so impressed at their honesty, said, “Let me call the local TV news and have them do a story.  I can’t believe that you actually returned this cash!  The couple, though, was horror‑stricken.  “Oh, please don’t do that,” they pleaded, “we’re married to other people!”

“Nobody almost has integrity,” says Chuck Swindoll.  “You either have it or you don’t!”  The dictionary defines it as, “The state or quality of being complete, undivided, or unbroken… moral soundness; honesty; uprightness.”  If Swindoll is right–that you either have it or you don’t–then far too many people today must find themselves in the “don’t have it” category.  Now, there have always been moral lapses.  There have always been individuals who have been corrupted with power and pleasure.  But today integrity itself seems to have been corrupted by our self-importance and the pressure to keep up or get ahead, no matter what the cost.

Integrity implies a knowledge of right and wrong.  It deals with black and white issues of truthfulness and dishonesty, of full disclosure verses shoddy half‑truths, of commitment and infidelity.  If integrity is in short supply today, and who would deny that it is, then our measurement of what constitutes right and wrong is also up for grabs.  When everyone does that which is right for him or her, then we have moral chaos.

Thinking that their children couldn’t get into the college of their choice, parents bribe someone to get them in.  Thinking that our husbands or wives will never know, we forget that when we breach our integrity, we are the real losers; something within us dies.  In the words of the children’ book, The Topsy-Turvey Kingdom, by Dottie and Josh McDowell, where hot is cold and up is down, “When lies became truth and right became wrong, someone was bound to get hurt.”

In most modern English translations of the Bible, you’ll find 27 references to the word integrity, and all of them are found in the Old Testament.  The Hebrew root means “whole, sound, unimpaired…” It speaks of the absence of duplicity, and means “straightforward” and “honest.”  Five of those references weave a story of testing around a man whose name was Job, who systematically lost almost everything that is precious to most people.  Even his wife chided him, “Do you still hold fast your integrity?  Curse God and die!”(Job 2:9), but Job did not curse God or abandoned his integrity.

An interesting study can be done of those 27 references to integrity which you find in the Old Testament.  If you have time to trace them, you’ll quickly see that integrity is at the very heart of the Christian faith.  Integrity means that the God who gave the Ten Commandments and the spiritual principles of the Bible, still expects people to keep their word and be true to their vows.

The Psalms speak of the integrity of the heart, and it is right there that you either win or lose the battle.  You can’t go back and undo yesterday’s mistakes.  But with God’s help, and a life surrendered to the control of the Holy Spirit, you can determine to be a man or woman of integrity starting today.

Resource reading: Job 1 – 2:13