This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Welcome to Day 3 of our look through the first part of Matthew chapter 7.
Remember, we're looking at these verses 3 to 5 focusing on them this week. Why
do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention
to the plank in your own eye?

How can you say to your brother, "Let me take the speck out of your eye," when
all the time there's this plank in your own eye? You hypocrite! Just take the
plank out of your own eye.

Then you'll see clearly enough to remove the speck out of your brother's eye.
Yesterday we focused on the "you hypocrite" part, admitting that we paint masks,
we make masks far too often. Today we're going to focus on this second word in
the picture that Jesus is giving us, the word "integrity.

" Hypocrisy is ignoring the plank in your eye. Integrity is removing the plank
from your eye. It's not enough just to see that the board is in your eye.

You've got to do something about it. I've known people who say, "I know I do a
lot of rotten things in life, but at least I'm honest about what a selfish
person I am, so at least I'm not a hypocrite. " Well, that's like the person who
is afraid to run in a race who says, "Well, at least I didn't lose.

" Of course you didn't. You never ran. You never took the risk.

And Jesus says, "Take the risk to live life. Start by getting the board out of
your own eye. Choose integrity.

" You choose integrity when you see a fault in someone else and you immediately
look at your self to see, "Are there signs of that same thing in my life? " Have
you noticed that it's easiest to notice the specks in others' eyes when you
happen to have a plank of the same kind in your own eye? You see in other people
the very problems that are most common in your own life because you're familiar
with them.

So the person in the office whose personality most irritates you is probably
more like you than you'd care to admit. And parents, I hate to tell you this, if
you're a parent, that one child who most bugs you is typically the child who is
most like you. That's just how we are as human beings.

But there's good news for your growth here. Because if you allow the faults of
others to become a motivation for your personal change, you're never going to
run out of motivation for change. And don't forget this.

Your faults can become the motivation for their growth, for their change. Just
think of the transforming impact in our lives. If the faults of others can
become a motivation for growth instead of a motivation for gossip.

Integrity is removing the plank from your eye. Getting the board out of your eye
almost always means more than noticing it and just easily plucking it out. David
wrote in 1 Chronicles 29, 17, "I know, my God, that you test the heart, that
you're pleased with integrity.

" Life is a test. And one of the main questions is your integrity. Everyone
knows that to do well on a test, you've got to prepare in advance.

So integrity means that you have to make up your mind in advance to do the right
thing. It's one of the keys. You don't wait until you get into a conversation to
decide whether you're going to tell the truth.

You decide in advance. You don't wait until your sexual purity is tested to
decide whether you're going to be pure. You decide in advance.

Now one of the best ways to decide in advance is to tell someone else what
you're planning to do. I remember years ago a businessman in our church came to
ask me for some advice about some business practices that were going on in the
accounting firm where he worked. And he talked with me about his concern that
although some of the practices were legal, they were immoral.

Instead of simply blaming others, he began by admitting the fault in his own
life that he'd allowed this to go on. And these concerns, they'd caused him to
look at his own life, to ask questions about his own practices. And he'd
determined to make changes in his actions, to speak up about his concerns in the
company.

He didn't blame others. He took accountability for what he'd done. He was
willing to stand up and do the right thing, even if it meant losing his job.

And he came and he talked to me, to somebody else, to say, "I'm deciding in
advance this is what I'm going to do. " He was willing to turn his desire for
integrity into a decision to act with integrity by telling someone else that he
was going to have integrity. That's what it means to act with integrity.

How do you and I do this? How do we choose integrity in our lives? Whether it
involves a small lie or a major deception, we all struggle with pretending.

We talked about that yesterday. The question is, what are you going to do about
it? We could easily list hundreds of choices that reflect integrity in our daily
lives.

Let me just give you a few to get started as you think through this. You choose
to speak the truth. You choose to be honest about your faults.

You choose to ask God for help. As you make those choices, you're making the
choice of integrity. First you choose to speak the truth.

Choose to speak the truth first about yourself. It's good to tell the truth to
others if you can do it in a loving and kind way, but Jesus's command here is
first take the plank out of your own eye. So we better start with telling the
truth about ourselves.

The truth about yourself begins with a tough question. Is there a lie that
you've been working overtime to keep covered? I encourage you to do the bravest
thing that you've ever done, to ask God for the courage to begin to tell the
truth, the strength to begin to tell the truth about yourself.

That's how you choose integrity. You choose integrity by being honest about your
faults. James in James 5-16 says, "Admit your faults to one another and pray for
each other.

" Now, what if I said, hey, find the person that's nearest to you right now and
do this right now. Just tell them all your faults. You'd say, what?

Honest about all my faults? My sins? That scares me to death.

No way am I doing that one. James is not telling us here to admit our faults to
everyone or the first person that you see. He says, admit them to someone.

Someone you can trust. Now, how do you know you can trust someone? Well, 5-16,
the next verse he says, at the end of this verse he says, "And pray for each
other," which isn't a bad place to start.

Find someone who will pray for you. It's easy to find people who will excuse
your faults because your honesty about your sins actually makes them feel
uncomfortable about their own sins. It's just as easy to find others who will
tell you how bad your fault really is because it makes them feel better about
their own.

Oh yeah, that really is bad, they'll say. But if you can find just one person
who will truly listen to you, who will take you seriously and who will pray for
you, you found a good friend. If you've got just one person like that in your
life, you're a truly blessed person.

If you have more than one, you are blessed beyond measure. You choose to be
honest about your faults and then you choose to ask God for help. David speaks
passionately about the choice for integrity, the need for God's help.

Psalm 101 verses 2 and 3, he says, "I will try to walk a blameless path and how
I need your help, especially in my own home where I long to act as I should.
Help me to refuse the low and vulgar things. Help me to abhor all crooked deals
of every kind to have no part in them.

" Integrity is about choosing to walk the right path. Integrity is about asking
for God's help. Integrity is about saying no, about refusing to pursue these low
and vulgar things that David talks about here.

He says it's about what happens in my own home where no one else sees but my own
heart certainly knows. Now when we think of low and vulgar things, we
immediately think of pornography on the internet or on cable TV, which is having
a devastating impact on our culture, on Christian families. Integrity means
saying no to pornography.

But there are other low and vulgar things that make their way into our homes as
well. So if you think, "Oh, I'm doing okay on that one," don't say, "Well, I'm
doing okay on everyone. " Saying cruel words, letting your anger burn out of
control, gossiping around the table, those are low and vulgar things as well.

God made us to look to him. God made us to trust in him. Psalm 93 verse 4 says,
"The Lord on high is mighty.

" So instead of looking low, you look high to the Lord on high. Integrity is
choosing to ask for God's help. God's help to say no.

Don't let Satan heap guilt and blame on you. Instead, you look high. You look to
the Lord.

Integrity is recognizing that without God's help, I don't have the power to say
no. So if I did the wrong thing, it's because I was looking to myself for
strength. I wasn't looking to God's help.

But with his help, we have a new power to say yes to the high and the mighty
things. I need his help. We need his help today.

So let's ask for it right now. Would you pray with me? Our Father, we want to
say yes to the right things.

We want to take the plank out of our own eye. We want to choose integrity in our
lives. And too often, we trust ourselves to choose integrity, our own strength,
our own morals, our own abilities.

And it works out for us some of the time, but too much of the time, we find
ourselves choosing the wrong things, going the wrong direction. We need your
help. We need your strength.

And we ask for it today. Strengthen us to choose the right things. Strengthen us
to be honest about our faults with ourselves and others.

Strengthen us to trust in you. Today we pray. Give us a new kind of strength
that can only come from your Spirit.

We ask for this in Jesus' name, amen. Make sure to join us tomorrow. We're going
to talk together about the gift of mercy.