Fruit of the Spirit: Goodness, Faithfulness

By Admin July 19, 2024 Fruit of the Spirit

The article is a transcript of a sermon discussing the importance of living a life of integrity, honesty, and faithfulness according to biblical principles. The main points covered include:

The biblical concept of truth and honesty stems from God’s nature of being absolutely consistent with Himself and reality. Dishonesty in human lives originates from doubting God’s truthfulness.
All human problems and sins arise from believing lies instead of God’s truth, often rooted in deep-seated idols or false beliefs about what will satisfy us.
Living with integrity means being sincere, genuine, and consistent across all areas of life – public and private, different relationships, and various contexts. It involves openness to self-examination, correction, and repentance.
Cultivating a life of truth requires daily repentance, remembering God’s grace and acceptance through Christ, and being honest with oneself, God, and others.
The sermon emphasizes the importance of rooting out the lies controlling our lives and living according to God’s truth, which brings freedom, joy, and a life that glorifies Him.

The Nature of Truth and Honesty: This chapter discusses the biblical concept of truth and honesty, rooted in God’s nature of being absolutely consistent with Himself and reality. It explains that dishonesty in human lives originates from doubting God’s truthfulness, as exemplified in the first temptation of Adam and Eve. The passage emphasizes that all human problems and sins arise from believing lies instead of God’s truth.

Idols of the Heart and Lies We Believe: The sermon explores the idea that all human beings are born with a root need to worship something other than God, often referred to as ‘idols of the heart.’ These idols take the form of lies or false beliefs about what will truly satisfy us, such as people’s approval, success, or pleasure. The passage suggests that these deep-seated lies control our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, leading to various problems and sins.

Living with Integrity: This chapter defines integrity as being sincere, genuine, and consistent across all areas of life – public and private, different relationships, and various contexts. It emphasizes the importance of openness to self-examination, correction, and repentance. The passage provides practical examples of what it means to live with integrity, such as being the same person in different crowds or life areas, and not saying one thing while doing another.

Cultivating a Life of Truth: The final chapter offers guidance on cultivating a life of truth and integrity. It highlights the importance of daily repentance, as repentance is the pathway to joy, cleansing, and freedom from the lies controlling our lives. Additionally, it emphasizes remembering God’s grace and acceptance through Christ, which allows us to be honest without fear of condemnation. The passage encourages honesty with oneself, God, and others as a means of living according to God’s truth.

Action Items

Identify and root out the deep-seated lies or false beliefs (idols of the heart) that control your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors
Cultivate a lifestyle of daily repentance, allowing God’s truth to expose and cleanse the lies in your life
Remember and embrace God’s grace and acceptance through Christ, which enables you to be honest without fear of condemnation
Practice openness to self-examination, correction, and repentance, welcoming input from others and God’s Word
Strive for consistency and integrity across all areas of life, being the same person in public and private, different relationships, and various contexts
Live according to God’s truth, allowing it to govern your thoughts, words, and actions, leading to freedom, joy, and a life that glorifies Him

Let’s take a look at 1 John 1, verses 5 through chapter 2, verse 8. And let’s continue with our series on the fruit of the Spirit, and let me read. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar, and his word has no place in our lives. My dear children, and I write this to you so that you will not sin, but if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense, Jesus Christ the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, not only for ours, but also for the sins of the whole world. We know that we have come to know Him if we obey His commands. The man who says, I know Him, but does not do what He commands is a liar, and the truth is not in Him. But if anybody obeys His word, God’s love is made complete in Him. This is how we know we are in Him. Whoever claims to live in Him must walk as Jesus did. Dear friends, I’m not writing to you a new command, but an old one, which you have had since the beginning. This old command is the message you have heard, yet I am writing you a new command. Its truth is seen in Him and you because the darkness is passing, and the Truth. If we have claimed to have fellowship with Him, yet walk in darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth.

We’re going to do something pretty ambitious. We’re going to take a look at two of the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit are listed in Galatians 5 verse 22 and following, their love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and then we get on to meekness and self -control. But we’re going to look at goodness and faithfulness together. And the main reason is because goodness and faithfulness are awfully, awfully interrelated. They really both have to do with integrity. They both have to do with living honestly, living by the truth. Now, I put down here at the top, and I’m going to try to follow this pretty closely here. Goodness and faithfulness are two spiritual fruit which are related because they both have to do with leading a truth -centered life. The word integrity, and we had a, when we were preaching through the Ten Commandments earlier in the year, we spent some time on this. The word integrity is related to the English word integer, and an integer is a whole number as opposed to a fraction. A person of integrity is someone whose life is unified by the truth, and you are not two -faced. You’re not living in a fractured way.

I remember watching one of the Hill Street Blues. I loved Hill Street Blues. I hated it when it went off, and I haven’t liked any of the other, Stephen, what’s his name? Who produces it? Yeah, whatever you said there. I got my media experts, Batchco’s, right? Yeah, right. I liked it elsewhere. I haven’t liked LA law that much because it just gets more and more upscale. I like the dirt under the fingernails. In Hill Street Blues, the hero is Frank Ferrillo, and he’s married to Veronica Hamill’s character. What’s her name? Joyce, that’s right, Joyce. They’re in a, they’re in a, they’re in a, a cocktail lounge and they’re supposedly off and having a good time as Frank and Joyce. Frank’s a police lieutenant or captain, he’s a captain. And at one point somebody comes up to him and tries to offer him some drugs. So here’s Frank, he doesn’t know, obviously the guy doesn’t know that the guy, that Frank is a, a police captain and he does, and he’s off duty. He looks, he thinks, he turns around, pulls out the cuffs and he said, okay, we’re going downtown. And at this point Joyce looks at him and said, you don’t know how to keep your professional life and your private life apart. We’re out here enjoying ourselves and you can never get away from business. Now, and Frank looks and he realized, yeah, yeah, I’m just a driven man. Now why, why would this be a modern issue? Is it wrong to deal drugs only, you know, on the job, but it’s okay in private or I mean, is it, is it right to go after drug dealers? You know, when you’re on the job, but when you’re off, you’re not supposed to do that. Frank Ferrello’s got a typical problem, and Joyce has got the same problem. In the old days, we believed that all truth meant at the top, and that if you believed in truth, it was true not only for your public life, but for your private life, and your life hung together. It hung together because the same truth governed every area of your life.

Today, we live in a fragmented world, and in which in one area, you’ve got one set of values, another area, you’ve got another set of values, and for example, you’re told, the modern culture tells you, you’re a Christian, you’re one of these born -again types, wonderful, but that’s okay for your private life. Do not try to get that out into your public life. Do not try, they say, to legislate morality. Don’t try to get your morality out in your public life, or you’re imposing it on everybody else. They don’t want to, on the other hand, they don’t see when they say that, that they’re doing it to you. See, when you say, truth is, religion is relative, it’s for your private life, and don’t bring it out into your public life, don’t impose it on other people, they are imposing their view of religion on you. They are saying that religion is relative, it’s only for the private life, and you can’t use it in the public arena, you can’t impose your religion on you, and they’re imposing their view of religion on you, it’s called relativism, you see. The problem is that the modern way of thinking has no integrity to it, because they don’t believe in a truth, modern man doesn’t believe in truth, that fits into every area of life, and therefore Frank Perillo can’t have a life of integrity. Now what we’re going to do as we move through the passage and talk about what it means to have a life of integrity, a truth -centered life, a life based on the truth. We’re going to get into some heavy stuff, hopefully we’ll also get into some very practical stuff. We’re also, you know, I was looking at my handout, the trouble with a handout is, I was reading it tonight, the trouble with a handout is now that I wrote it down and gave it to you, now I’ve got to pretty much follow it, and some of you say, since when? But at least you have to. deal with the issues that are raised. What we’re going to do is first of all, let me just remind you here again, goodness and faithfulness are two through the Spirit and they’re very close together because goodness has to do with consistency and sincerity. Goodness has to do with sincerity. A sincere person’s heart is like a clear lake that you can see all the way to the bottom on. What you see is what you get. A sincere person. Whereas faithfulness has to do with dependability, follow -through, responsible, someone who keeps promises. Consistency and dependability are really two aspects though, aren’t they awfully closely related? They’re two aspects of honesty and integrity and that’s the reason why we’re going to consider them together and I’m going to run back and forth between the two. I’m not going to spend the rest of the time tonight making a lot of distinctions between goodness and faithfulness. They’re very closely related. They both have to do with a life of honesty and integrity.

So let’s first of all take a look and see. what the Bible teaches about truth, and then what the Bible teaches about getting the truth into your life, becoming a person of goodness and faithfulness. Verse 5, the passage says, God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all. That is a very profound verse, out of which we can draw many things. A teacher of theology named John Murray wrote this, and I put the quote in here, it’s a profound, profound thing, and I know that when we first read it, you’re going to say, boy, that’s heavy, and I have to chew on that. Let’s chew on that. John Murray is talking about what does John mean when he talks about truth. We should bear in mind that the true in the usage of John is not so much the true in contrast with the false, though it is, or the real in contrast with the fictitious, though it is. It is the absolute as contrasted with the relative, the ultimate as contrasted with the partial, the substantial in contrast to the shadowy. God is the truth, God is truth absolute, ultimate, eternal, in contrast from all that is relative, derived, partial, and temporal.

Now keep, you know, be patient, keep following here. When we speak of the sanctity of truth, we must recognize that what underlies this concept is the sanctity of the being of God, as the living and true. This is why all untruth and falsehood is wrong. It’s a contradiction of that which God is. This is why God cannot lie. To lie would be to contradict himself, and he cannot deny himself. It is his perfection to be consistent with himself. The attribute of God is often expressed by his faithfulness, this certainty and unchanging nature of his promises. Now, that’s deep theology, but it’s also extremely important. What he is saying is this idea of honesty that God gives us is not busy work. The way my algebra teacher used to give me busy work, to keep me off the street. She just would make things up. Well, I don’t know, she would say, what should we do tomorrow? Well, do five problems in page seven. and eight problems on page nine, and we hated her for it. God doesn’t give us busy work. When he says, be honest, he doesn’t say, because I want to keep you busy, because I like, because I, you know, I have a right to boss you around and tell you what to do. No. When he says be honest, he means be like me. The idea of honesty arises from one of his perfections, and this perfection is that he is absolutely consistent with himself. He cannot be other than what he is. He cannot contradict himself. He cannot say one thing, one place, and then contradict himself another place. He is, well, the Bible says he is simple. The Bible says he is simple, not convoluted. He does not have parts to him. Rather, whatever he says today is also true tomorrow. Whatever he says in one context is also true in another context. And the whole idea of truth and honesty is absolute consistency. And that’s the reason why John Murray is pointing out that the idea that God is light in him as no darkness at all is the basis for understanding of truth.

So keep this in mind. What does it mean to be honest? It means to be absolutely consistent. Now, God is consistent with Himself. What does that mean for us? We’re going to see. It means to be consistent with reality. And it means to be consistent with what you said in the past. It means to be consistent from place to place and with person to person and in public and private. That’s what integrity means. That’s what truth is. That’s what goodness and faithfulness is. Now, verse 10. It says, if we claim we have not sinned, we may come out to be a liar. The problem with the human heart is not just that we are dishonest. Our dishonesty comes, is rooted in the accusation that God is a liar. Real dishonesty in our lives starts when we distrust God. The first temptation, you know Adam and Eve were pretty happy people. They lived in perfect relationship with God. Along comes the serpent, Satan. And the first temptation has to do with truth. The serpent comes up and says, hey, how are tricks here? And Eve and Adam say, well, this is good, and that’s good, and this is good, and we’re not supposed to eat of this fruit, and God knows what He’s doing. And the serpent says, has God said you must not eat of that? Do you know why? He knows that if you eat of that, your eyes will be open, and you will be like Him. He’s trying to keep you down, Satan says. He’s trying to fool you. He’s trying to deceive you. And what Satan did was he insinuated against God’s veracity, against God’s truthfulness. The first temptation and the first sin was not eating the apple. The first sin was to believe that God was a liar. And man’s dishonesty starts the minute. that you mistrust God’s honesty. You become a liar the second you believe God is a liar. And you will never tell a lie again if you believe God. Now look, the first temptation was to doubt God’s veracity. Satan accuses God of deception, deliberate falsehood. The first sin directly results from the belief that God’s a liar. Since then, the sin of doubting God’s word or his truth is basic to all other sins. Distrusting the integrity of God immediately destroys the integrity of man. Think about it, this is worth chewing on. This is the sort of thing that you can chew on a long time. And think about every sin, including our own dishonesty, comes from doubting God’s faithfulness and his promises. Every sin arises from believing lies instead of the truth.

Now, this is the point at which I could probably spend at least an hour elaborating, and I better not, but bear with me for a bit. You remember, some of you do, some of you don’t, In the fall, we spent some time talking about the idols of the heart. It’s my conviction that the Bible teaches us that the root need of every human being is to worship something. And since all of us are born in sin, that means all of us are born wanting to worship something besides God. As you grow up, your parents, the way they teach you or the way they treat you, your friends, your culture, give you all kinds of bulletins and eventually at some deep level we all come to believe something besides God will satisfy us. That is the big lie in our lives. Every human being has got a big lie, capital B, capital L, operating at the bottom underneath everything else that drives you. Now we talked about this in the fall and I can’t go into it in great detail, but it roughly goes like this. Why is it that some of us are so incredibly scared that people will reject us? Why are we so destroyed when we find that people don’t like us? It’s because there’s a big lie operating down underneath and that says that if people love you, if everybody thinks you’re terrific, then and only then will you have a worthwhile life. Then you’ve made it. Why are some other people driven by the need for money and success? It’s because there’s a big lie operating in them and the big lie is unless you make a lot of money and get ahead in your career, you’re nothing. You’re dirt, you see. There’s a lie down there operating. You’re worshipping the success or you’re worshipping people’s approval or you’re worshipping pleasure, you’re worshipping something and the worship takes form, the form of a lie and it expresses itself in your psyche and controls you that way. And if you take a look at every one of your problems, you’ll see at the root it’s because you’re believing a lie instead of the truth.

Now look, some of us get depressed. Why do we get depressed? We’re feeling sorry for ourselves. That’s a lie. See, when you feel sorry for yourself, this is what’s going on. There’s a little record going on down deep underneath and you’re saying this. What did I ever do to deserve this? What did I ever… Right? that I ever do to deserve this. Sometimes you say it out loud but most of the time it just goes on underneath. Right? We know, right, if you’re a Christian, that that’s a lie. Because the answer is, you’ve done everything to deserve this. That’s the biblical answer. You’ve done everything to deserve far worse than this. So what if God began to give you what you deserve? Then what would happen? As R .C. Sproul used to say, one of my teachers R .C. used to say, never ask God for justice. He might give it to you. You demand, I want justice at midnight tonight, there wouldn’t be anybody on earth at 1201. Well, you know, what are we doing when we talk about that? And we’re laughing at ourselves because yes, we know that we don’t operate on the basis of that, do we? Instead of saying, I’m alive today with the grace and mercy of God, everything that comes in my life today that’s better than hell is His mercy. Instead, we get up and say, I deserve better than this. And what you’re doing is you’re being controlled. You don’t believe God. You’re not believing God. See, it’s one thing to believe in God, it’s another thing to believe God. It’s much harder. Abraham believed in God, but it also tells us in Romans 4, he believed God, so he staggered not at the promise. You know, he didn’t stagger at what God said. He didn’t say, it’s too good to be true. He says, it must be true. God says, I’m going to bring this into your life, and instead of Abraham saying, I don’t believe that, he says, okay, I’m going to act on the basis of that, and so he began to act on the basis of the truth. When you act on the basis of the truth, you don’t feel sorry for yourself anymore.

Or, you know, another one that’s really fun to talk about, which we often do here, is worry, right? When you’re worried, there’s a little record going on down there that says, if I was in charge of the universe, I would be doing a better job than the one who’s in charge of the universe now. If I knew what was going, if I was in charge, I would have the schedule worked out differently, I wouldn’t be having this happen and this happen, and you’re saying, Lord, if I was in charge of the universe, I would do a better job than you right now. I’m worried that you’re not going to get it right. That’s what’s happening. You see, you say, well, I’m consumed by worry. No, you’re controlled by a lie. Now, let’s be real about this. Let’s be very realistic about this. The lies are so deep -seated that this side of heaven, we’re never going to root them all the way out. But to the degree you root them out, you become a person who can obey God and live a life of glory and honesty and courage. At the root of all of our problems is a disbelief of God. We believe God’s a liar, and every single day we treat him as if he’s a liar, and all of our sins come from that root.

Now, you know, I even put down here in the… I guess I really, I don’t know that I got time for this, but I’ll just briefly mention it. One of the best books in my life has been, and when I do this, you’re going to say, oh, where do I get it? Listen, this is not a new book. easy book to read, especially if you’re not used to reading King James English. It’s a book written by Thomas Brooks in, what, Kathy, are you there, when was this written? 1652, 1652, just about one of the best counseling manuals ever written. It’s called Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices, far better than anything written about Satan in the last 200 years, honest. Now, one of the things he does is he shows something that we generally do not recognize when it comes to Satan, and that is, since our sins are based on lies, Satan essentially is a liar. The Bible says Satan is a liar from the beginning, and yet whenever we say this person is under the control of Satan, we almost never begin to realize that the way in which Satan might be controlling this person is through mental lies. We have a tendency to command and to yell and to scream instead of teaching. And what he does is he goes through and shows all the different ways in which your life can be absolutely demolished by a lie that Satan not only injects but keeps stirring up. As an example, he says one of Satan’s devices is he keeps people in a sad, doubting, questioning condition to make their life a hell by causing them to be thinking and musing more on their sin than upon their Savior. So he says this is one major problem, that people are often cast down, their life is a hell. They go around, he says, they go around constantly in doubts and in guilt and in depression because they see their sin more vividly than they see their Savior.

It is most true that sin and grace were never born together and neither shall sin and grace die together, but while you breathe in this world, sin and grace will live together and they will keep house together in you. Christ in this life will not free any believer from the presence of sin, though he doth free every believer from the presence of sin. damning power of sin. For it says in Romans 8, there is no condemnation for them who are in Christ Jesus. The law cannot condemn you. It’s there, the sin is present, but the sin cannot condemn you. It cannot push you away from God. It says the law cannot condemn a believer for Christ has fulfilled it for him, divine justice cannot condemn him, for that Christ has satisfied. His sins cannot condemn him, for they in the blood of Christ are pardoned, and his own conscience upon righteous grounds cannot condemn him because Christ that is greater than his conscience has pardoned him.

Now what is Brooke saying? He’s saying you’ve got to argue the truth down in the center of your being, the reason that you’re full of guilt, the reason that you’re cast down is because you’re believing a lie. In fact, another one of the remedies, he has about seven remedies for that, and some of you are saying, give me, give me. But here’s the most interesting one. Now listen, the last remedy is this. The sixth remedy against this device of Satan is solemnly to consider, again, think. that believers must repent for their being discouraged by their sins. And what he’s saying is, your real sin that you need to repent of is your discouragement because of your sin. And he says, as soon as you repent for the discouragement of your sins, as soon as you repent for the fact that you’re not looking at your Savior and not rejoicing in what he’s done for you, instead of, you know, you’re looking at your own sins more than you’re looking at your Savior, he says, if you repent of that sin, you’ll get freedom. And he says, their being discouraged by their sins will cost them many a prayer, many a tear, many a groan, and that because their discouragements under sin flow from ignorance and unbelief, it springs from their ignorance of the richness, the freeness, the fullness, the everlastingness of God’s love, and from their ignorance of the power, glory, sufficiency, and efficacy of the death and sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ. What he’s saying is, repent of that. When you look at your sins and say, oh, I’m just too bad and too awful for God to do anything with me, he says, you know, the real sin that’s getting you in trouble, you need to repent of being discouraged about your sins, of thinking so little of the power and the efficacy and the everlastingness of God’s love that you really think that this little sin of yours can somehow overwhelm his purposes for you, and his purpose for you is glory and love and his bosom.

So what is Brooks doing? All the way through here, he says, essentially, every one of our problems comes from believing lies, and that means believing that God is a liar, not believing something that he says in his word. All of our problems come from believing God’s a liar, and every day we are acting as if he is. Integrity, a life of integrity begins when we stop treating him as a liar. It was the first temptation, and we haven’t gotten over it yet. Now, one other thing I should say, as you look at the handout, it’s also true, the dynamic works at the intellectual level. I said, at the personal level, the heart level, to doubt God’s truth, is the cause of all our problems. It’s also true at the intellectual level, I only say this in passing, but it’s important. If you do not believe in the Bible, if you don’t believe that God has spoken in the Bible and that it is his revelation, if you don’t believe the truth of the Bible, there’s no way to know any truth at all. See, if you doubt God’s integrity, it destroys your integrity, that’s the personal level. At the intellectual level, if you doubt that God has ever given, if you doubt that God’s given absolute truth, then you will lose the ability to have any truth at all.

Let me give you two examples. One, I remember back in 1969, I think it was, or 70, right in the middle of the Cambodia invasion. In the middle of the Cambodia invasion, at my college campus, just about all the students got up and said, enough is enough, this is terrible. And so they shut down all of the classes. Boy, kind of the classes. And it was called The Strike, and it was an interesting time where everybody was sitting around saying, what are we doing as America and what is truth and where are we going and how are we going to change the world? It’s amazing. It’s thousands of college students sitting around, just sitting around talking about this all the time. And you could walk up to people and say, what is the meaning of life? And they say, well, let’s have a group and talk about it. Everybody wanted to. They didn’t say, well, what I want to know is how am I going to get a decent job? Nobody said that. It was two years later before people said that. There was a strange period of time in the history of the college campus. And right at that time, we had a man come to a Christian who was a musician and who was also an evangelist. And he came and he was John Guest. And John Guest came and put himself up in the middle of the bison. Now, the bison was like the Greenwich Village of our college campus. It was the radical center. And everybody sat around and talked about, what are we going to do about the Cambodian invasion? John Guest, I forget how we got permission. He just put himself up in the middle and he sang some songs. It was very good. And then at one point, he turned around to everybody and he said, I’m a Christian now. I believe the Bible now. He says, if I were to tell you, you people should stop sleeping around with each other, what would you say? And he just waited. Now that’s guts. And the people started saying, I would say to you, don’t tell me what’s right and wrong. I know what’s right and wrong. This is a matter of my own personal choice, my own authentic freedom I have to exercise here. And everybody read Camus and Sartre there. And that’s what they, somebody said that from the floor. And then John looked at them very coolly and said, okay, how dare you tell people that the Vietnam War is immoral. Don’t you realize that if all truth is a matter of personal, authentic choice, if there is no God who has spoken objectively, then all such pronouncements about this being moral and that being immoral, all of them are subjective. You have no right to tell anybody that they can’t go over there and burn babies. maybe that’s their thing. And nobody said anything, because that’s back when people used to say, do your own thing, I’ll show you how ancient I am. And he looked at them and he said, maybe that’s their thing. How can you call them immoral? You can say, I’ll stop it, because I personally find it offensive. And I will personally come and take your bazookas away and kill you, but you can’t say that this is immoral. And what he was saying was just this. When you destroy the possibility of absolute truth, you destroy the possibility of any truth. When you say God has not spoken, then the fact is we are down to the place where everybody’s opinion is all we have. And that’s what we say here. If you don’t believe that there’s a God’s truth, we can’t know truth at all. Everything is subjectivism and we can know nothing for certain. And that has happened, by the way, that people are absolutely inconsistent. Because on the one hand, they’ll say there’s no absolute truth. And then as soon as you say, I think there is, they’ll say, you’re wrong. And of course, what they’re doing is they are saying, I’m absolutely sure that there’s no absolute truth and they’re laying one down. They’re caught in all the contradictions that the same person is the one who says, you may not impose your religion on people in the workplace, but they’re doing it to you the minute they speak. Because their life is in fragments, because unless you believe in God’s truth, there’s no coherence anymore. There’s nothing but contradictions.

Now, let’s be real, let’s be practical for the last couple of minutes we’ve got here. When it comes to really being people of integrity, let’s break it down and let’s take a look at it. Verse 6, if we claim to have fellowship with Him yet walk in darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. If we say one thing and do another, remember we said that what makes, what gives us a definition of truth is God’s nature and God’s nature is to be consistent with itself. Goodness is being sincere and genuine. The same in public as in private. In Psalm 15, the psalmist says, who will dwell in your presence? He who speaks truth from the heart. He who is not only one way on the outside and another way on the inside, but somebody who is on the outside from the inside. And so we put down here, let’s take a look at this. You see, William Granall was another Puritan said, sincerity is marked by newness, plainness and sameness. If you’re a sincere person, that means you’re not a hypocrite. He says, if you’re a sincere person, a person of integrity, then you are marked by newness, plainness and sameness. What does he mean? It’s great.

First of all, newness. The one way you can tell that you’re not a hypocrite is that you knew that you used to be and you still struggle with the possibility of being one. See, real hypocrites have no idea that they are. Real hypocrites will say they never have been and they aren’t now. That’s how you know a hypocrite. Right? Bible says? C .S. Lewis says, if you think, you see, if you think what? That you are, you think that you’re proud? No. What is it? Yes, that’s right, conceited. Yes, if you think you’re not conceited, you’re very conceited indeed. That’s the way you know you’re conceited. Good work up here. You’re getting high grades. You’re getting high grades. Look, in the same way, the way you know that you’re not a hypocrite is that you know you used to be one and you still see lots of hypocrisy. That’s the reason William Gurnall said, the way you can tell you you are developing integrity is you know that integrity is a new thing for you. And the only way to know that you have got any integrity at all is you recognize it’s new. When somebody says, what do you mean? What do you mean I’m a hypocrite? I’m not a hypocrite. Immediately you know that person has got no newness about them. The integrity is not a new thing for them. There’s never been an ah -ha about their life and you cannot have moved into out of hypocrisy and out of dishonesty, into integrity and honesty, unless you can see the hypocrisy in your life and you struggle constantly with hypocrisy. So that’s the first thing, newness.

Secondly, plainness. By plainness, there in all means, the old Puritans used to talk about the plain, to be plain means to be open. And a person of integrity is a person who is open with themselves and with God and with man. Now, openness with God means that you’re willing to say, I’m a sinner. Openness with man means you’re willing to take criticism. I must confess this and I hope nobody gets irked at this. Over the years when I have counseled people, I have noticed that 99% of the time, if I’m counseling women, the women will say, hmm, I never thought of that, that’s pretty interesting, maybe I’ll make that change. When I counsel the men, they say, that’s ridiculous, that’s silly, I don’t like it, and then they go off and they make the change. See, in other words, the women will tell me if they’re making a change, the men will insist that they won’t and then they’ll go off and do it when it looks like nobody sees them, when it looks like it’s their idea, when they can get themselves to agree that it’s their idea. Now, what that means is, there’s a lack of integrity there. Integrity means there’s an openness in letting people come and say, something’s wrong with you. A person of integrity is willing to say, maybe there is. It doesn’t mean you have to immediately let somebody walk all over you. It means to say, yes, maybe there is and I’ll take a look at that. I really am glad you told me that. And that’s openness. But really, the real sincerity and real integrity comes from being open with yourself, being honest with yourself, looking inside and seeing, getting truth in the inward parts, this alma says, truth in the inward parts. It’s a frightening thing to me to see how many people with great knowledge of the Bible are still guilty of so many of the things that anybody, even non -Christians, certainly can see. Here you’ve got knowledgeable Bible Christians, people that know the Bible real well, and yet they can’t keep their mouth shut. They can’t keep a promise. You tell them a promise, next thing you know it’s all over the place. Or there’s other Christians who are incredibly vain about not only how they look but who they’re seen with. Or there’s other Christians who are so abrasive that they cannot give you a criticism without upsetting everybody. Or there’s other Christians who are so incredibly sensitive and get their feelings heard all the time that after a while you just don’t want to come and tell them anything that’s wrong. What are these things? These are character blemishes. Oh well, you say, you know, I see that in all kinds of people all around. But if you are a person of integrity, you are willing to let the truth of God’s Word search you and you are willing to get truth in the inward parts. You’re willing to actually say, I want the Lord God to search me and show me my hidden faults. I really want to see them. Are you a person of integrity? The reason we say you have to be open with yourself and open with God and open with man is because they all happen together. You can’t be open with one without the other, they all have to happen together. The way you can tell you’re being open with yourself is that when somebody comes up to you and corrects you, you don’t immediately get your back up. And you can say all you want to about how you’re open with God, but if you’re not really able to work through in a ruthless self -examination your own life and your own sins, then you’re not open with God either. So that’s what we mean.

Also, wait, wait, I’m not done, newness, plainness and sameness, sameness. Now what he means by that is a person of integrity is somebody who is the same in every area of life, in every arena of life. Now same in every area of life we mean this. Some people are really pretty godly in one area, but in another area they’re terrible. Some people, for example, are, you know, in every, in public they’re one way and private another way, or vice versa. There’s some people who in their private life are very, very moral and very religious, but in their public life they’re ruthless and as cutthroat as anybody else in their business. They’re as impure as anybody else. That’s wrong, that’s a lack of integrity. Or sometimes it’s vice versa. They’re paragons of virtue out in public, but in the family and in the home. People know how angry they get, how abusive they get, how cold they get. That’s a lack of integrity. Or when I talk about different life areas, it’s very, one of the things that intrigues me is the old liberal conservative problem. Liberal people, the liberal, liberal politics says you should, you can do, you should be able to do whatever you want with your body, but not whatever you want with your money. In other words, my personal life, who and how many different kinds of variations of sexuality that I want to deal with, whether or not, you know, all these things, this is my personal arena. In the area of taking care of the poor, we ought to legislate economic justice. Conservatives are the other way around. Conservatives try to say, we need to have legislation that supports the family, and we need to have legislation that supports traditional values, but when it comes to giving money to the poor, that should be totally voluntary. You see, conservatives want to say legislate personal morality, but not social morality, and liberals want to say legislate social morality, not personal morality, and a Christian sees that all of those things are under God. And by the way, as far as where the government goes, it’s not going to get into that. But the fact is, a Christian says, there’s a lack of integrity there. There’s a lack of integrity. You shouldn’t be moral in one area, not another. You should not be different with one crowd than another. Some of you are very different with another kind of crowd than you are with this kind of crowd. And the illustration I like to use, not so much here, but down in Virginia, where we had managers and labor people in the same… church, and it was a real union town. So you’d walk into one room, and everybody was sitting around saying, you know what’s really made this country great? Labor unions. Labor unions is what kept us, made us a great country, was kept giving us a middle class, and, you know, don’t you think, Pastor? I’d say, well, yeah, absolutely. And I’d walk into another person’s home, and everybody’s sitting around saying, you know what’s really ruined this world, this country? You know why, you know what’s just tearing us down and driving us into the ground and ruining our economy? Labor unions. And don’t you think that they have killed us? Don’t you think, Pastor? So I’m sitting there going, oh, yeah, so I would do so. Well, you know, I probably, you know, there’s a lack of integrity there.

To be a person of integrity means that you’re not different in different arenas, not different in different places, not different in different crowds. You mean what, you don’t say one thing and do another. You don’t mean one thing and do another. You’re not different with one crowd than another crowd. You’re not different in one area than another area. You’re a person of integrity because you have truth in the inward parts. Newness, plainness, and sameness.

Okay. Time’s up, as usual. Let me show you something on the back. Yeah. Okay, one last thing here. Look at the bottom. How do you cultivate truth? Chapter 2, verse 8. Its truth is seen in him and you because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining. The way you cultivate goodness and truth, I’ve just put down three or four things.

First of all, honesty with yourself. The best way to develop a lifestyle of truth is to have a lifestyle of repentance. Martin Luther said all of life is repentance. That was the first of the 95 theses that he nailed to the Wittenberg door to start the Protestant Reformation. All of life is repentance. If you think you’ve gotten beyond repentance so that now you just have victory in Christ or you have some model of the Christian life that gets you beyond, daily repentance. You’ll never be a person of sincerity or integrity, dependability. Never. Why? Because you can never get beyond repentance because repentance is what brings you joy, repentance is what cleans you out, repentance is what gets you out, gets at the lies that are controlling you. So first, repentance.

But secondly, remember that God is all -knowing, sovereign, and gracious. We have one who speaks to the Father in our defense. The reason that you can be honest is because you shouldn’t have anything to hide. God has seen you. He knows everything about you. There’s all kinds of things in your heart that have not popped out yet. Most of you have years and years to go, and there’s all kinds of selfish actions, cowardly actions, impure actions that are still in your heart that you don’t even know are there. They’re gonna pop out later. They’re gonna pop out next year. They’re gonna pop out 10 years from now. When you see them, you’re gonna be horrified. But God sees them now, and God loves you. Because we have an advocate with the Father, one who speaks to us, speaks for us in our defense. God accepts you through Jesus. There is nothing to hide. You can’t hide anyway. It says in Hebrews, all things are open and naked to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. What a great statement. With Him to whom we have to do. If you’re not hiding in Christ, then you’re going to have to be hiding everything else. But if you’re hiding in Christ, you don’t have to hide anything else. If you know that because you’re in Jesus Christ, God sees everything about you, even the worst and loves you completely, then there’s nothing that you have to hide. Who cares what anybody else thinks? The only verdict that counts is His. And His verdict is, this is my beloved child, in whom I’m well pleased. Stop your hiding, root out the big lies in your life, and live a life of goodness and faithfulness. Let’s pray