This weekend is exciting to me to see all the graduates and their families. Graduation weekend is a reminder of, and parents get this, how quickly life goes. My baby graduated ten years ago from high school, and six years ago from college. It just blows by. So, you don't mind today if I speak to the graduates, right?

In fact all of us should be continuously graduating to the next level from where we are so we don't stink up Heaven. Isn’t that a good idea?  Open your Bible to Matthew chapter 5. We're continuing our summer series, It's Complicated, about relationships. Everything to God comes down to our relationships. If you're not right in relationship with a person, you can't be right in your relationship with God. If you're not healthy in your relationships with people, you won't be healthy in your relationship with God.

For young people who are moving out into the world, your ability to succeed in relationships is going totally to depend on your IQ. And I do not mean your intelligent quotient; I mean your integrity quotient. All relationships are based on trust. Can people trust you to do what you say? Can people believe you are who you profess to be?  Here's a great question all of us should ask today: would God call you a person of integrity? 

All relationships are based in trust. Integrity is really about what you do when you are by yourself. That's what integrity is really about. Let’s pray.

Father God, invade the deepest part of our being. That we may truly be children of Your Light. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

Look at Matthew 5:33-37. "Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not break your oath, but fulfill to the Lord the vows you have made.' But I tell you, do not swear an oath at all: either by heaven, for it is God's throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. All you need to say is simply 'Yes,' or 'No'; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.” (See when Jesus was teaching this, they didn't have Grecian Formula.)

Why is it that we make people say oaths?  Right now, I can throw my 14-month-old granddaughter throw her up in the air, and she has no worry in her mind that she is going to get dropped. But somewhere between the ages of 2 and 5, people often do drop us. So we begin to question. By the time she's 5 and I put her on a diving board and tell her to jump, she's going to say, "Promise nothing is going to happen to me, Papa?" There is something that happens in our relationships, and we learn not to trust. So even by the time you are 5 or 6, you say "You promise?  Cross your heart and hope to die?"  Even in our legal system, courts require us to take an oath: "Do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?" 

Now what Jesus is telling us in this passage is there are not degrees to our promises. You know, sometimes we make a promise, and we think it’s not that important. When I married Carolyn I said to her this is unto God. We will not break this relationship until death do us part. That's a pretty important promise. Right?  But other promises we make, we don't take as seriously. We have even come up with this category of white lies. White lies are not like ugly lies. They’re not quite in the category of sin. But Jesus said whatever promise you make, don't swear by heaven, because heaven is the throne of God, or by earth, which is the footstool of God. Whatever promise you make, God is there. God's present. You don't have to put your hand on the Bible, because God is present in every promise you make and will hold us accountable for the promises we make in our lives.

Remember, we are taking the whole summer to go through the Sermon on the Mount. Let’s look at Matthew 5:20. “For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.” Jesus is telling us that unless our rightness (that's what righteousness means, to be right with God and people) surpasses that of religious leaders we will by no means enter into the kingdom of God. Now, if you notice, the people who rejected Jesus were basically religious people. And, when you look at his movement and his disciples, his disciples were basically people who were rejected by the religious institution. Throughout the New Testament he keeps calling religious leaders hypocrites. The New Testament was written in Greek. The Greek word for hypocrite is actor. Jesus is confronting religious people who are portraying themselves to be one thing in public when that is not who they are in private. Integrity has everything to do with what you do when you are by yourself.

See, life is lived from the inside out. The core of who you are determines your values, and your values determine the kind of person that you really are. Graduates, when you arrive at college, immediately your values are going to be tested. You are going to be pushed to the wall with what you call truth. Your faith is going to be challenged. When Jesus stood trial before Pontius Pilate, he said “I have come to testify to the truth.”   And testify not only means with your mouth but to embody the values of God. Immediately Pilate comes back at Jesus (he's the dude with the authority), and he says to Jesus, "Oh yeah, like what's truth?"  A recent survey from Barna research revealed that only 22% of adult Americans believe in absolute moral truth. Here's what’s even more disturbing, Only 33% of Americans who claim to be born again Christians believe in absolute truth. The premise of the worldview that all of us have been immersed in is that truth is relative, it changes with each generation and it’s culturally self-determined. So let me tell you right now, as young adults, you are going to be challenged about what you believe or what you call truth.

I had a professor at the University of Cincinnati named Dr. Butler, who claimed to be an atheist. I don't know why, but he took swipes at Christians every opportunity he had. He told us that by this age, the age of 18 or 19, we should have reached the point where we basically view religion as only a myth that helps teach human values. Early in the class he asked us if there were anyone in the room who would still call himself or herself a committed Christian. There were only four of us who admitted it, and we saw right away that we were going to be attacked all the time.

He would throw out various ideas and make arbitrary claims like, “Everyone knows that the Bible contradicts itself.” Of course, I was the irritant. “Oh, Dr. Butler, Dr. Butler, can you please show us where?”  Well I knew, like most people in America, he didn't know where because he never read it. People just keep repeating this mindset of what they have heard. Then we found out that 50% of our grade was going to be based on this final paper. That is a chunk, man. When 50% of your grade is based on a final paper, you have to know that you will need to hit it out of the park just to pass. Immediately, I knew what I was going to do. I made a decision when I was 18 and went to college that I was not going to compromise my values or my faith. During my senior year in high school, I was in a rock band that was busted. I struggled through high school. But now I had this Jesus commitment in my life. So I wrote my paper from a Christian perspective, and I challenged Dr. Butler in that paper on several of his positions.

See already at a young age in college, I was working on my spiritual gift of irritation. Now, guess what my grade was?  Well, I still remember it. It’s the only thing anyone ever wrote on a paper that I still remember. He wrote “A for academic excellence but worse than witchcraft.” But, I got the A. How many people will challenge your values or tempt you to compromise your values because you’re going for the grade. Or, perhaps it will be the boss who has power or authority over you. In my life, remember, my background was such that I was pretty unboundaried. So now I had made this commitment to Jesus. I could have gone to some great Christian colleges that I now speak at: Indiana Wesleyan, Olivet Nazarene, Mount Vernon Nazarene, Asbury. There are some great Christian colleges. But when I went to college, the Christian colleges then wouldn't let you wear jeans. I had long hair; they made you cut your hair. And, you couldn't hold a girl's hand on campus. Well that would have totally like freaked me out because their focus was on something that Jesus wasn't focusing on. So I really thrived in a secular kind of open exchange of ideas at the University of Cincinnati. But, please hear me, that environment did not shape my values or character. For my values, I always come back to the One whose word is truth. Now what I want you to notice in this passage is the number of times Jesus says, "But I tell you.” See verse 22, “but I tell you,” verse 28, “but I tell you,” verse 32, “but I tell you,” verse 34, “but I tell you,” verse 39, “but I tell you,” You know what Jesus is saying?  You are going to hear many explanations of truth when you go out into the world. You're going to hear different explanations of truth from Christians. People are even going to use the Bible to support different explanations of truth. Don't set your values or your character on the basis of what other people tell you. It always comes back to, “but I tell you.”  So every value of my life from the time I was 18 years old and made this commitment to Jesus comes back to the One whose word is truth.

Do you know who Thomas was? Jesus' disciple Thomas we’ve nicknamed Doubting Thomas. I can relate to Thomas. I’ve been following Jesus for 41 years, and I still have some doubts. Anyone else in the room willing to admit that?  In my devotion this morning I was reading the first part of the gospel of John: “In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God and the word became flesh and blood among us.” It was talking about Jesus. That’s a lot intellectually to get your head around. So for me, this journey of faith has always been like the guy in the Bible in Mark chapter 9 who came to Jesus and said, "Jesus, if you can, will you heal my kid?"  Jesus replied, “What do you mean if I can?  All things our possible to the one who believes.”  The father’s response is one of my favorite verses in the Bible, I pray it everyday. I pray, “I believe; help my unbelief.”  Can you relate to that?  You don't need a lot of faith; Jesus said you only need faith the size of a mustard seed to activate this God-life in your life. So Thomas had seen Jesus do all these miracles. I always thought if I could be like the disciples and see Jesus heal blind people and deaf people and raise people from the dead that I'd never have any doubts. But that's not true. Thomas was a disciple and he asked Jesus, "What is the way?"  In other words, break it down for us, Jesus. What is this life all about; what's truth? And you know what Jesus said?  Here is what it comes back to. “I am the Way. I am the Truth. I am the Life. No one comes to the Father but through Me.” John 14:6

Now when Jesus says that, it’s not just some exclusive thing that involves rejecting people. What it means is that you will never come to that place of experiencing God-life in you, of being the person God needs you to be, and of being the person your family believes you to be, when you aren’t in relationship with Jesus. When you go off to college, it is going to be really easy to forget who you are and whose you are. Let me say right now whose you are.  You belong to God whether you realize that or not. And the reason it’s so easy to forget the promises that we have made to God, our parents, and other people, is that we want to fit in. I remember the first time I tasted beer; it was terrible. I couldn't believe it. The first time I tasted beer I didn't feel anything, because I couldn't get enough down. It was like, “Give me my Hawaiian Punch.”  You know what one of my buddies said? “You have to develop a taste for it.”  Well the problem is we go to college and think we have a little time to party. Then, when we get out of college we think will get our lives together. But here's what happens. When you begin to develop a taste for sin, you forget who you are and whose you are, and it becomes deadly in our lives.

You know, you don't have to go off to college and forget who you are or break the promises you have made to God or people who love you the most. You know in college you can really grow in faith and character. This week we interviewed two 25 year old young women who graduated from Ohio State a few years ago. For both of these women, college was a time of growing in faith and values, so we asked them how they did it and this is what they said.

[Video with Stacy Slaughter and Kara Crawford]

I am Stacy Slaughter.

I'm Kara Crawford, and we graduated from high school in 2003 and went to The Ohio State University.

We were randomly assigned roommates. People think when you go to college, you get to drink. You can drink and party all night, skip class. You can definitely do that if you want, but we are proof that it doesn't have to be that way.

You know, you will get invited to everything and a lot of it is something that you may or may not feel comfortable doing. We could always go to each other and say, “I don't want to do this. Let's plan something else.” 

We wanted people to see us in a positive light all the time. And that is so important because you aren't going to have your parents; you aren't going to have your siblings. You are on your own with that. You're on your own.

We tried many Christian organizations until we found a church that we really enjoyed going to. And it was creating like our team, our friendship, that we could go and explore all the different options to see what all was offered at Ohio State for people who wanted to get plugged in and meet other Christians.

And I saw Kara, every night reading the Bible. She would talk about with me before we went to bed, and we would squish into one of our little beds and talk for hours at night.

Stacy would yell out, "I'm not tired, are you?"  “No, I'm not tired,” and we would stay up till 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning just to talk about life.

Kara was always there to answer my questions, explain things, tell me more about the Bible. Then I became more interested. She even gave me my first Bible that I would actually read. Through that we stayed close with God and continued to grow in our relationship with each other. God, and our spiritual connection, truly helped us become sisters. I grew up with values, but I think Kara just taught me a lot in college and I appreciate everything she did.

Going to Bible study would have been a lot tougher if I wouldn't have had Stacy by my side. So Stacy definitely encouraged me to continue my faith and my growth. It wouldn't have happened if I didn't have her.

Going forward I suggest to all you graduates, continue your faith. Do this by getting involved, and find an accountability partner like we found in each other. It will make college more fun.

You won't have any regrets looking back, and I think that is really important.

[End of Video]

What would happen if through everything we did in life we had the word integrity tattooed to our foreheads? You know who that one young woman was, don't you. It's my daughter-in-law Stacy. And you know I'm so thankful that a young woman in this church, Kara, went to Ohio State, got matched with someone as a roommate she didn't know, and shared her faith with my daughter-in-law. You know, we have been praying for my daughter-in-law ever since my son was born. So a young woman in this church prepared a daughter-in-law for us. She didn't go to college and lose her faith or values. Right?  She embodied the character of God. That is really what integrity is all about; it’s striving to embody God's character.

Look at Matthew 5:48 with me again. This is the key verse to the whole Sermon on the Mount. “Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” It doesn't mean that you are committed to follow all these external rules. What it means is everyday you strive to embody the character and values of God. Now I want you to turn over to the 6th chapter of the gospel of John. John 6:54 is one of the most baffling texts in the whole Bible. It is so baffling that by the end of that chapter many of Jesus’ disciples said, “Man this is freaky, we're out of here.” And many of his disciples left. And this is what Jesus said, "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise them up on the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink, whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me.” Now would that not sound freaky to someone who is outside the church? See we have made it an external ritual that we call communion. But in this passage it almost sounds like the Vampire Chronicles to me, and I'm out of here.

What we have done as Christians is to make this just an external thing, but Jesus is saying that it needs to be an internalized practice each day of your life so that his life more literally becomes your life. You must take his values and his character into your life on a daily basis.  I only have life and integrity as I take Jesus’ life into my own, as I take Jesus’ values into my own, and as I trade my character for his character. Now one of the people who is named by God as a person of integrity is David. Last week we talked about David’s problems with lust and adultery. But, by the New Testament in Acts 13:22, God says, "David is a man after my own heart"  Now men, how many of you in this room would love to hear God saying to Jesus right now that you are a man after God’s own heart? See, God knows our heart. You can fool a lot of people, but you can never fool God. God said two important things about David in Psalm 78:72. God could use David because David had integrity of heart and skill of hands. It is important to understand those two dimensions; they go together. David had heart integrity and produced quality work. You won’t do average work or poor work if you have integrity of heart. Here is what integrity of heart means. You’re one thing inside and out. You're authentic. You're the real deal. You walk the talk. Your yes means yes, and your no means no. You are true to who you are and who other people believe you are.

Jewish people in the Old Testament had 672 moral laws that they tried to follow. Can you imagine that? 672.  I don't know if I could recite all Ten Commandments right now in the correct order. I can tell you what they are. There were 672 moral laws, but Jesus reduced it to two. Do you know what they are?  Love God, and love people. That is integrity when I am focused every day on loving God with all my heart, mind, soul and strength. When I focus on loving people as myself then all my actions toward you and with you will be God's actions. So I can't go out and party with you, because all of my actions toward you and with you must be God actions. Sisters, I will only respect you as God's daughter. Young men, when you take a woman out, guess whom you are dating?  When you pick her up, you're taking out God's daughter. I don't think you want to tick off that Daddy. Am I right? How many of us have gotten into trouble because we sacrificed integrity for relationships, for monetary gain, or to fit in. Jesus said you will lose your soul. Your will lose yourself.

See, truth is not the servant of self. It's not about happiness, it's not about having fun, it's not about successfulness, it's not about your ego. It's serving the purpose of God in the interest of others. That's integrity. I study a lot of business practices and have discovered that so much of the economic crisis in the world right now is based on people sacrificing integrity for monetary profit. I don't know what Steve Jobs of Apple believes. I don't know what he believes, but the new thing out is the iPad. This week an editorial in Time magazine talked about how Steve Jobs  is criticized because he has restricted the downloading of porn applications onto the iPad. So people are saying, “This is America. You’re restricting the free flow of information.” What Steve Jobs says, it's a powerful quote, is "Pornography is not healthy for families."  Now I would say that he is sacrificing a little bit of profit for integrity—not integrity for profit. This criticism will become louder. People will proclaim, “This is America; if Jobs does this then it’s exactly like what happened in China with Google.” Well, here is real American freedom—you don't have to buy the thing. Am I right? You don't have to buy it. See, that's integrity because legal doesn't make it right. The law comes by human beings. The law changes; some things are legal but they are not moral, sisters and brothers. People of integrity commit themselves to what's moral. Moral comes from God. Laws come from human beings. Laws are temporary. Carolyn and I are heading out of here today, and I can't wait to get south of Northern Kentucky where the speed goes up to 70 miles an hour. And it could change. Moral laws are the eternal laws of God. I'm committed to what's moral, not what's legal. That's integrity.

Now the second part of why God could use David was because of his skill of hands, or the quality of his work. Now folks, I want to tell you something. Your work is a statement of who you are as a person. I love what people said about Jesus, Jesus had a lot of skeptics and critics in the crowd. After watching him perform a miracle on a man who was both deaf and mute, the crowd looked at each other and said you have to admit, this dude does all things well. Do you like that?  All things well. I was a flunky in high school. Then I met Jesus. I committed my life to Jesus. My lowest quarter in college was 3.47. See, I was serving a different Master. Excellence honors God.  This is what it says in Colossians 3:23, it says "Whatever you do, work at it with all of your heart as if working for the Lord, not for human masters."  When we have integrity of heart and skill of hands, then we become the salt and light in the world that Jesus is talking about here. You become the salt seasoning that brings out the God flavors of this earth. You become the light bringing out the God colors in the world.  

Well, graduates, I want to tell you this life fact. Life gets better when you get better. Does that work for non-graduates too?  Life gets better when you get better. We are going to have a promise today. A prayer promise. Graduates, do not pray this if you don't mean it because God is going to hold you accountable for this. Everyone here, I'm going to read the prayer before you pray it because once you pray this out loud God will hold you accountable to it. Some of you might need to say I can't pray that right now. If so, pray silently, “Lord, help make me willing to be able to pray that.”

Jesus, I'm yours. I am not my own. My life has been bought with a price. Use me for your purpose. Fill me with your Spirit. Keep me in your will. Amen.