Because of My Integrity :: Psalm 41:12-13
Christ is risen! (He is risen, indeed!) Hallelujah!
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! Amen.
David prayed to the Lord of hosts in Psalm 41, You have upheld me because of my integrity, and caused me to stand in your presence forever. Blessed be Yahweh, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting! Amen and Amen (vv 12-13).
1.
Integrity means “whole and undivided.” Integrity indicates original, unblemished condition. Because integrity means “whole, original, and unblemished,” the word also can be used to indicate such beautiful qualities as honesty, faithfulness, purity, reliability, uprightness, honor, incorruptibility, forthrightness, and other noble virtues.
David wrote the words ... Because of my integrity ... NOT because he wanted to sing and pray them all by himself. David wrote Psalm 41 because he wanted you to sing and pray with him. He wanted YOU ... all of you ... to say to God in sincerity and truth, You have upheld me, [O Lord,] because of my integrity.
Can you bring yourself to do that?
God ... the living God ... provided that David’s words be written into his Holy Scriptures. David’s words are in the Scriptures because the Living God wants you to pray with all honesty: You have upheld me, [O Lord,] because of my integrity.
Can you do it?
Can you honestly join with David in saying to God, You have upheld me, [O Lord,] because of my integrity?
The answer is YES! It is Yes because you are a baptized child of Christ. It is Yes, because Christ is risen! (He is risen, indeed!) Alleluia! The resurrection of our Lord has guaranteed that your answer is YES, even though you might feel tempted to think your answer should be NO because of my integrity. He has given you integrity ... the state of being whole and undivided.
Everybody wants to have integrity, the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles ... but nobody actually has integrity ... at least, not in the original, main sense of the word. Our loss of integrity was originally Adam and Eve’s fault. Later, it became ours, too.
Integrity means “whole and undivided.” Integrity indicates an original, unblemished condition. Integrity can be used to indicate such beautiful qualities as honesty, faithfulness, and purity. We all want to be described with such wonderful words. To be sure, to a certain extent, we all can be ... but only to a certain extent.
Do you hesitate to pray to the Lord, You have upheld me because of my integrity?
Perhaps you do not think all the qualities of integrity rightly describe you all the time.
Perhaps you can see a different set of qualities at work inside yourself ... NOT whole and undivided, but sometimes double-minded, having doubts, as Saint James wrote (Jas 1:6-8).
Perhaps you can see a different set of qualities at work inside yourself ... albeit chipped or broken, stained with sin, hampered by the memory of wrongdoing, and marked with regret.
Perhaps you can see a different set of qualities at work inside yourself ... honest, but not always ... true and faithful, but only when no temptation is present ... mostly reliable and fairly honorable and hopefully incorruptible, but nobody’s perfect!
Such realizations might make it feel a little dishonest for us to pray with David, You have upheld me because of my integrity. We all want to have integrity. In most cases, any of us would gladly describe ourselves as having integrity, but we probably would NOT want to talk that way in the presence of God. He knows our hearts (Lk 16:15). He knows where the integrity falls apart. Do you think it is wisest and best to mumble Psalm 41 when it states, You have upheld me because of my integrity? Do you think it wise to pray those words with the thought that they probably refer to someone else but NOT so much to you or me?
2.
David wrote Psalm 41 because he wanted us to sing and pray with him. David’s words are in the Scriptures because the Lord our God also wants us to pray those words together with David. You have upheld me because of my integrity, David said.
Throughout the season of Lent, all of our midweek worship has focused upon Psalm 41. The midweek preaching emphasized two vitally essential points for God’s Christians: In one way or another, all of God’s Psalms ... including Psalm 41 ... speak about our Lord and his work of salvation on our behalf (Lk 24:44). That is why God included the Psalms in his Scriptures. They bear witness, Jesus said, about Me (Jn 5:39). Because the Psalms are about Jesus, they are also, therefore, about you. In baptism, you miraculously entered into Christ’s holy body (Rm 12:5; 1 Cor 1:30) just as surely as he entered yours (Jn 14:20; Gal 2:20). He lives in you and you live in him (Gal 2:20). And now that ... Christ is risen! (He is risen, indeed!) Alleluia! ... You and your risen Christ are now joined together as one flesh (1 Cor 6:17; Eph 5:32). What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate (Mt 19:6).
What does our union with Christ indicate?
It indicates that, when Jesus of Nazareth died upon his cross, you and I and all the baptized of Christ died there with him. Baptism is why Paul could say, and why we each can say with Paul, I have been crucified with Christ (Gal 2:19b). In addition to that, Baptism also indicates that, when Jesus rose from the dead, God the Father also raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Eph 2:6). At your Baptism ... your Lord’s perfection became yours, and your sins became his (1 Pt 2:24) ... His strength became yours, and your weakness became his (2 Cor 12:8–9) ... his life became yours, and your death became his (Rm 6:4) ... and his perfect and unblemished integrity became yours, and any lack of integrity in you became His. You are now partakers of the divine nature, Peter wrote (2 Pt 1:4).
3.
Please now turn to page 325 in your [Lutheran Service Book] and join me in confessing this faithful doctrine on the Second Article of the Sacrament of Holy Baptism. ... What benefits does Baptism give? ... Which are these words and promises of God?
4.
Because of your baptismal participation in the divine nature of Christ, every Scripture passage that speaks about Jesus now also speaks about you. In all of human history, only Christ Jesus, our Lord, could pray to his Father on the basis of his own merit that You have upheld me because of my integrity. But Jesus has now joined himself to you. In that miraculous union, whatever the Scriptures say about Jesus can now also be said ... in all faithfulness and honesty ... about you: You have upheld me because of my integrity.
Integrity means “whole and undivided.” Integrity means “in the original, unblemished condition.” Integrity indicates such qualities as honesty, faithfulness, purity, reliability, uprightness, honor, incorruptibility, and forthrightness. Those qualities all describe Jesus, the One who was crucified (1 Cor 1:23) ... and is now risen! He is risen, indeed! Hallelujah! .... Because of our Lord’s integrity (Acts 2:24), God raised him up, having loosened the anguish of death, because it was not able to seize him by it.
As you heard in today’s Gospel ... When the Sabbath had passed, Mary the Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices in order that ... they might anoint [the body of Jesus]. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. And they were saying to each other, ‘Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?’ And when they looked up, they saw that the stone had been rolled away ... it was very large. And when they entered the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, wrapped in a white stole, and they were awestruck.
And he said to them, ‘Do not be awestruck. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified one. He has been raised. He is not here. See the place where they laid Him.’ (Mk 16:1–6).
On account of his death ... and in the victory of his resurrection ... Jesus has now given all of you his integrity so that his perfect integrity may be yours forever! Our Lord’s personal integrity has been delivered to you in the water of Baptism, which joined you to both his death and his resurrection (Rm 6:3–5). Jesus overcame your sin and death through his integrity, his moral uprightness.
Our Lord has given his personal integrity to you through the proclamation of the Gospel. Our Lord’s integrity likewise enters your mouth and fills your entire body when you participate in the blessed Sacrament of the Altar, through which our Lord delivers to us the forgiveness of sins. With confidence, we can now proclaim that Christ lives: Death no longer has dominion over Him (Rm 6:9). Our Lord’s integrity, given to you, is the power by which you now can pray to the Lord, with all godliness and honesty, You have upheld me because of my integrity.
King David did NOT rely upon his own integrity when he prayed. King David relied upon the integrity of his Christ, who was both David’s Son and David’s Lord. You and I do NOT need to rely upon our own integrity any more than David did. David’s Son was born also TO US (Lk 2:11). David’s Lord died also FOR US. David’s prayer is therefore our prayer, and David’s rejoicing in eternity is likewise our rejoicing, now and forever.
Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting! Amen and Amen. Why? Because ... Christ is risen! (He is risen, indeed!) Alleluia!