Integrity Comes From Obedience To God Series

Sermon Brief

Date Written: August 22, 2006

Date to be Preached: August 27, 2006

Where Preached: OZHBC (AM)

Sermon Details:

Sermon Series: Living a Life of Integrity

Sermon Title: Integrity comes from

Obedience to God

Sermon Text: Daniel 1:1-21

* - before beginning the sermon we have a sketch entitled "The Monkey House" written by Scott Crain and is available online at www.dramaministry.com (approx 3 minutes)

8 But Daniel made up his mind that he would not defile himself with the king’s choice food or with the wine which he drank; so he sought permission from the commander of the officials that he might not defile himself.

Dan 1:8 (NASB)

Introduction:

This morning I want you to turn to Daniel… the 1st chapter and we are going to look at and study about something that is disappearing in our world today and that is INTEGRITY!

What is integrity? The Encarta Dictionary defines integrity as “…the possession of firm principles… the quality of possessing and steadfastly adhering to high moral principles or professional standards…”

Back in the day…some would have said that integrity was keeping your word and doing the right thing, regardless of the circumstance or situation or how it affected you…

But in today’s world, integrity has lost its meaning, in fact there are many in this world today who don’t even know what integrity is…as this recent street interview video reveals…

Here I show a video called "Integrity" that I downloaded from www.sermonspice.com (Video length is about 2 1/2 minutes)

Out of the 34-35 people who were interviewed on that short 2½ minute video 12 people either refused to answer or they said they didn’t know what it meant…

Of the remaining 22 people 8 people felt that honesty was the main ingredient to integrity…

Others were more vague in their comments saying things like…

• Doing what you’re supposed to do… in our world today that has many meanings and is NOT a straight forward answer…

• Doing what you say you’re gonna do... again in our world today this could mean anything and it does not reflect what integrity is… if a man says he is going to rob a bank and does… does he have integrity?

• Feeling good about what you do… this answer is conforms to the secular humanist movement that saturates our society today… all is focused on yourself and YOU are the center of the universe!

• It is Self Worth… again focusing on yourself and the humanistic flavor of the world we live in…

I was most impressed by 3 particular answers that were given…

One man actually gave 2 of these answers. He first said, “…it is something inside you that does the right thing…’ His other answer was, “…not always doing the popular thing, but doing the right things regardless…”

That man’s answers matched up well with another man’s answer of, “…doing the right thing all the time no matter what the consequences…”

And as good as those answers sound, yet still they do NOT accurately give us a picture of what true integrity is in the life of a believer! We know that Christ would never have misled anyone! And we also know that God does not LIE.

So, as believers, our lives are to be transparent and forthright with the world around us as well as with God in Heaven…

Living a life of integrity is a must for the believer and it does not matter where he or she is in life, it does not matter about the circumstances of life or the situations that others place us in…

We are called to live a life that reflects God to the world… in all of our actions, in all of our words and in all the places we choose to go in our lives!

We can see by our passage this morning that Daniel chose to live a life of integrity, not because Daniel was so super good, but simply because Daniel was obedient to God’s commandments.

This morning you have seen both a video and a skit about integrity and they both have brought out some great points about what Integrity is supposed to be… and what it is NOT!

This morning I want to share with you from this passage some points on integrity and how integrity can only come through our obedience to God. The 1st part of this passage clearly reveals the…

1. Situations of Life (v.1-7):

In life we often find ourselves in situations that we did not create, but others have put us in… but we are still called to live a life of integrity regardless of the situations we find ourselves in…

In these verses we find that Daniel’s nation was overthrown and his life was turned upside down by the actions of others…