Because of My Integrity

​Easter – 2024                                                                                                 LSB #’s 457, 464, 463
Text – Psalm 41:12-13
 
BECAUSE OF MY INTEGRITY
 
 
Christ is risen!  (He is risen indeed!)  Alleluia!  Grace, mercy, & peace to you from God our Father & our risen Lord Jesus Christ!  Amen.  
David prayed to the Lord of hosts in Psalm 41, “You have upheld me because of my integrity, & set me in Your presence forever.  Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting!  Amen & Amen.” 
Lack of integrity – there’s a pandemic of that going on in our nation today.  Integrity means ‘whole & undivided.’   Integrity indicates original, unblemished condition.  Integrity can be used to indicate beautiful qualities such as honesty, faithfulness, purity, reliability, uprightness, honor, incorruptibility, forthrightness, & other noble virtues. 
David wrote, “Because of my integrity,” not because he wanted to sing & pray all the psalms by himself.  David wrote Psalm 41 because he wanted you to sing & pray together with him.  He wanted you to say to God in sincerity & truth, “You have upheld me [O Lord] because of my integrity.”     Can you bring yourself to think that, let alone speak it out loud? 
God, the Holy Spirit, inspired David to write those words into the Holy Scriptures.  David’s words are there because your Lord & Savior wants you also to pray, with all honesty, “You have upheld me [O Lord] because of my integrity.”  Can you honestly join with David in saying to God, “You have upheld me [O Lord] because of my integrity”?   The answer is Yes!  
Yes, because you are the baptized child of God & because Christ is risen!  He is risen, indeed!  Alleluia!   It is the resurrection of our Lord that has guaranteed your answer to be Yes, even though you might feel tempted to think  that your answer should be no.  Followers of Jesus want to have integrity, but nobody actually has it – at least, not in the original, main sense of the word.  Our loss of integrity was originally Adam & Eve’s fault, & once we were conceived it became our fault.  Integrity means ‘whole & undivided.’  Integrity indicates an unblemished, original condition.  Integrity can indicate beautiful qualities as such honesty, faithfulness & purity.  Those who follow Jesus long to be described with such wonderful words. 
The miracle of Christianity is that in Christ, you can be.  Those words are how Christ describes you to the heavenly Father at your Baptism.  Those words are your eternal characteristics as a child of God.  That’s why we celebrate the fact that Christ is risen from the dead.   He is risen so that the word integrity can be used in a description of you. 
Do you hesitate to pray to the Lord, “You have upheld me because of my integrity”?  Perhaps you don’t think all the qualities of integrity rightly describe you; certainly not all of the time.  Perhaps you see a different set of qualities at work inside yourself:
Not whole & undivided, but sometimes doubleminded (James 1:8), & at other times doubtful.  (Matthew 14:31)   Not in original, unblemished condition, but chipped or broken, stained with sin, hampered by the memory of wrongdoing, & scarred with regret.   Not always true & faithful, but unreliable & dishonorable, even corrupted. 
Those realizations make it feel brazen or dishonest of us to pray David’s words, “You have upheld me because of my integrity.”  
We’d like to have integrity.  In most cases, any of us would gladly describe ourselves as having integrity, but we probably would not want to speak so boldly in the presence of God.  He knows our hearts.  (Luke 16:15)    He knows where the integrity falls apart.  
Perhaps it is wisest & best to mumble Psalm 41 when it states, “You have upheld me because of my integrity,” or to pray those words with the thought    that they probably refer to someone else   but not so much to you or to me.      We are wrong to think that.    David wrote Psalm 41 because he wanted us   to sing & pray together with him.  David’s words are in the Scriptures because the Lord our God wants us   to pray those words together with David.  “You have upheld me because of my integrity.”  
Through the season of Lent, all our midweek worship has focused upon Psalm 41 & the sermons have emphasized two vitally essential points for God’s children:
In one way or another, all of God’s Psalms – including 41 – speak about our Lord & His work of salvation on our behalf.  (Luke 24:44)   That’s why God included them in His Scriptures; they “bear witness about Me,” said Jesus.  (John 5:39) 
And because the Psalms are about Jesus, they are also about you.  After all, you are the baptized of Christ.  When you were baptized, you miraculously entered into Christ’s holy body (Romans 12:5; 1 Corinthians 1:30), just as surely as He entered yours.  (John 14:20; Galatians 2:20)   And Christ is risen!  (He is risen, indeed!)  Alleluia!  
You & the risen Messiah are now joined together as one flesh.  (1 Corinthians 6:17; Ephesians 5:32)   “What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate!”  (Matthew 19:6)   What does that union with Christ indicate?  It says that, when Jesus of Nazareth died upon His cross, you & I, & all the baptized of Christ died there with Him.  
Baptism is why Paul could say, & why each of us can say with Paul, “I have been crucified with Christ.”  (Galatians 2:20)   In addition,   Baptism also indicates that, when Jesus rose from the dead, God the Father also “raised us up with Him & seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”  (Ephesians 2:6)               At your Baptism:
The Lord’s perfection became yours.   Your sins became His.  (1 Peter 2:24) 
Christ’s strength became yours.   Your weakness   became His.  (2 Corinthians 12:8–9) 
His life became yours.   Your death became His.  (Romans 6:4) 
The perfect & unblemished integrity of Jesus became yours.   Any lack of integrity in you became His.   You are now “partakers of the divine nature,” said Peter.  (2 Peter 1:4)  
Because of your baptismal participation in the divine nature of Christ, every Scripture passage that speaks about Jesus now speaks also about you.   In all human history, only Christ Jesus, our Lord, could pray to His Father on the basis of His own merit, “You have upheld Me because of My integrity.”  
But Jesus has joined Himself to you.  In that miraculous joining, whatever the Scriptures say about Jesus can now also be said, in faithfulness & honesty, about you: “You have upheld me because of my integrity.” 
Integrity means “whole & undivided.”  It means “original, unblemished condition.”   Integrity indicates qualities such as honesty, faithfulness, purity, reliability, uprightness, honor, incorruptibility & forthrightness.    Those qualities all describe Jesus, the Crucified One.  (1 Corinthians 1:23)   Because of our Lord’s personal integrity:
“God raised Him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for Him to be held by it.”  (Acts 2:24)    As you heard in the Gospel reading:
“When the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, & Salome bought spices, so that they might go & anoint Him.  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 one another, ‘Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?’  And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back – it was very large.  And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, & they were alarmed.”  And he said to them, ‘Do not be alarmed.  You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.  He has risen; He is not here.  See the place where they laid Him.’”  (Mark 16:1–6) 
 
By the power of His death, & in the victory of His resurrection, Jesus has given all of His integrity to you so that His perfect integrity may be yours forever!   His personal integrity was delivered to you in the water of Baptism, which joined you to both His death & His resurrection.  (Romans 6:3–5)    Our Lord’s personal integrity has miraculously entered into your heart & mind through the proclamation of the Gospel.   Our Lord’s integrity likewise enters your mouth & fills your body when you participate in the blessed Sacrament of the Altar.   With confidence, we can proclaim that Christ lives – & we live with Him – as we hear in Romans 6:9, “Death no longer has dominion over Him.” 
Christ’s personal integrity, given personally to you, is the power by which you now can pray to the Lord, with all godliness & honesty, “You have upheld me because of my integrity.”  That same integrity, poured out by Jesus, is the only reason why I can pray along with you. 
King David did not rely upon his own integrity when he prayed.  King David relied upon the integrity of his Messiah, who was both David’s Son   & David’s Lord.   You & I do not need to rely upon our own integrity any more than David did.   David’s Son was born also to us.  (Luke 2:11)   David’s Lord died also for us.   
David’s prayer is therefore our prayer, & David’s rejoicing in eternity is likewise our rejoicing, both now & forever: “Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting!  Amen & Amen.”    Why?  Because Christ is risen!  (He is risen indeed!)  Alleluia!  Amen. 
 
 
The powers of death have done their worst, But Christ their legions hath dispersed.  Let shouts of joy outburst.  Alleluia!       He broke the age-bound chains of hell; the bars from heaven’s high portals fell.  Let hymns of praise His triumph tell.  Alleluia!      Lord, by the stripes which wounded Thee, from death’s dread sting Thy servants free that we may live & sing to Thee.  Alleluia.  Amen.  LSB 464:2, 4-5.