Integrity Test - Genesis 42:1-43:14 Series

When you think of Joseph in the Bible, one of the key thoughts that comes to your mind or key words is integrity. The guy had a lot of integrity. When you think through the Bible about Joseph, he's one of those guys nothing bad is said about him. Only good things are said about him. So he just is a man of integrity. So today we're going to do an integrity test. You see Joseph in our story today is going to put pressure on his brothers. He's going to do an integrity test with them. What I believe what's going to happen here in our lives is that we're going to do our own integrity tests of our own hearts. How are we doing in the integrity area is the question I think we want to ask ourselves today.

In order to do that, I want to define integrity for you a bit. I want to illustrate it by talking about a bridge. If we say “that bridge has integrity,” what we mean is that the bridge has the ability to stand up. In particular, it's not corroded on the inside, ready to collapse. Secondly, it can withstand the pressures from the weather, and from the trucks and the cars, and the vibrations of life going over it. It gives a good analogy because as we look at our own hearts and evaluate our own integrity, I think we want to look at three areas. So young people, I want you to listen to what I have to say here because your integrity is very valuable and you want to be able to strengthen that in your own heart. There are three things that we can draw upon integrity in our own lives.

One is that we're able to deal with the internal challenges, that is the temptations that we face. Do we have enough internal strength to deal with the temptations that come our way? Temptations like the temptation to immorality, or anger, temptation to bitterness, or to being dishonest. Do we have the integrity to face the temptations that we experience? That's number one.

The second thing that I think integrity does is it gives us the strength to deal with pressures from outside the challenges of life. When things don't go the way we expect, when we're disappointed when bad things happen, when we're surprised by problems in our lives, do we have the strength to deal with those and to face those in our lives? That's number two.

Number one was temptation internally. Number two is external challenges. And three is honesty. When we think about integrity, honesty is usually the first thing that comes to mind. Honesty is that ability to speak the truth, even when it's difficult, when you're challenged about something and you would rather get something and you know you have to lie to get it, then that's the test. Do you have the integrity to do what's right in a difficult situation? Integrity is very important.

We see Joseph experiencing all three of those already as we've gotten to know him a little bit. He had the temptation to immorality with Potiphar’s wife, but he said no to that. He had the internal strength to deal with the temptation. We don't know a lot about his experience. But I imagine he had the integrity to deal with the temptation toward discouragement, given his plight that he had many times, the temptation to become bitter against his brothers. He had to deal with all of those things, the temptations.

He also had that second component, that ability to face challenges. We see him over and over again facing challenges that he didn't expect that were unfair for him. So he finds himself spending a lot of time in prison. Can he handle that? Well he appears to have that internal strength to do that. And that's one of the reasons we admire him.

Is he honest? Well I remember when the baker said, “Well tell me my dream. You gave such a positive interpretation to the cupbearer. Mine must be positive too,” Joseph didn't water down the story at all. He told him the truth, that you're going to die. That's what he told him. When Pharaoh said to him, “I heard that you are an interpreter of dreams, that you can interpret my dream,” Joseph didn't pretend. He didn't lie and say, “Yes, I could do it.” He says, “God is the one who interprets dreams.”

So in each case, we see Joseph having that internal strength. I want to ask ourselves the question, do we have that internal strength? But not just that question. I want to ask an additional question at the end of the sermon: Where do we get it? And how do we have that? If you want to develop more integrity in your life, how do you develop it? What's going to happen inside of you in order to do that?