Who Are You, Really? | Psalm 101

written by Joel Davis

The psalm I want to talk with you about today reflects on integrity and how the psalmist’s (David’s) integrity leads him to feel about folks who lack integrity. The question we want to be asking ourselves is, where does integrity begin and how does integrity shape our hearts as we pursue it? Let’s start by just reading verse 1:

I will sing of your love and justice;
to you, Lord, I will sing praise.

Integrity Begins With Beholding

We don’t always notice it, but the Psalms are organized in a structure. You may have noticed there are 5 books within the Psalms, but even inside of those there are smaller sections that share themes. Psalm 101 follows and reflects on a series of psalms called the “Yahweh Reigns” series. [Look at Psalm 93, 97, 99 for examples]. Psalm 101 is the king’s response to how God rules His people. “Faithful love” and “justice” are a common pair when talking about God’s rule (see Psalm 98:2-3). What we see is that God is ultimately faithful, unflinching in His loving commitment to His people, and He has the ultimate capacity to rule well—the scales of justice are in perfect balance for everyone, no matter the size of their bank account of their standing in life.

Like a beautiful song or piece of art, that kind of Being inspires a response in its beholder. You’ve probably heard it said before that “we become what we worship.” If we spend all our lives walking in the footsteps of cruel people, we’ll tend to become cruel people ourselves. If we’re surrounding ourselves with people who are constantly anxious, we’ll find a way to be anxious ourselves. If we spend time beholding our faithful and righteous Creator, we’ll become like Him as well. Becoming people of integrity begins with beholding our loving Heavenly Father so that we might become more like Him. In our discipleship recipe, this is the discipline of reflecting, on the Word of God, spending time with our Father in prayer, allowing His perspective on life to become ours, and doing this before we even step foot out the door to start our day, because we know the bombs and bullets of life are coming.

Integrity Weeds Out Wickedness

Before I get any further into the psalm, I should at least define some terms for us. The Lexham Dictionary of the Hebrew Bible defines integrity as this—”perfection; purity, innocence; blamelessness; a quality of fullness; adherence to a moral code of conduct.”

If I were to put that in my own words, we’ll call this the Joel Davis dictionary of Bible words, I would say this: Integrity is being the same inwardly as you are outwardly; the same privately and publicly; the same when things are easy as when the mess hits the fan.” Let’s try to this illustrate this with some examples:

A piece of metal has INTEGRITY when it is pure, no imperfections, and holds up under pressure.

A person has INTEGRITY when I ask someone how they are doing and they really stop to tell me, instead of faking it ‘til they make it, or responding with something trite like, “I’m fine.”

IMAGE is who we want people to think we are; INTEGRITY is who we really are expressed for all to see.

The caveat that we need to make for that is that BIBLICALLY, integrity is when the inside and outside agree and they are both pursuing our Father’s Kingdom perspective. We would never say someone has integrity if they are always honest, but kind of a dirtbag all the time. Speaking of being a dirtbag, King David has done some pretty dirtbag-y things…

If integrity means you have nothing to hide; how is this psalm written by King David?! It’s hard to ignore the painful irony contained in the second part of verse 2:

I will be careful to lead a blameless life—
when will you come to me?
I will conduct the affairs of my house
with a blameless heart.

The head scratcher of psalm 101 is that his house is exactly the place where David failed most spectacularly in his integrity with Uriah’s wife Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11:2).

But even for those of us who have not fallen quite so tragically, to say that integrity begins in our home can feel like a high bar. Our families can unfortunately be the people that get the worst of us sometimes, can they not? We’re exhausted from a long day, our defenses are down, and WHAM, very easy to let a harsh word or a disinterested attitude through the filter.

This may be discouraging to you. You may feel like you can’t even read these words back to God in good conscience. When I was a kid, growing up in church, I used to not feel comfortable singing the words to the hymn “I Surrender All” if I hadn’t already actually surrendered all. What a hypocrite!

But if we’re walking in the Overflow of the Father’s love, we are free to merely aspire to these sorts of statements. Your heavenly Father knows that 5 seconds after you sing “I surrender all,” you’re going to be liable to pick something right back and clutch it tightly, all for yourself. Yahweh knew that David was going to sin grievously with Bathsheba, and nevertheless the Holy Spirit inspired him to write these words. The Lord is looking for our faithful response to His love, not perfection.

David is not the first world leader who chose image over integrity or failed morally, but integrity starting in our house means that we deal with our own integrity first before we lose our heads over the bad behavior of someone else. How many of us are ready to throw the remote through the TV when we see the latest news, but are unwilling to address the lack of integrity in our own hearts? Interestingly, this psalm concludes with some strong statements about the integrity (or lack thereof) of others…

Integrity Creates a Chasm

I will not look with approval
on anything that is vile.

I hate what faithless people do;
I will have no part in it.
The perverse of heart shall be far from me;
I will have nothing to do with what is evil.

Whoever slanders their neighbor in secret,
I will put to silence;
whoever has haughty eyes and a proud heart,
I will not tolerate.

My eyes will be on the faithful in the land,
that they may dwell with me;
the one whose walk is blameless
will minister to me.

No one who practices deceit
will dwell in my house;
no one who speaks falsely
will stand in my presence.

Every morning I will put to silence
all the wicked in the land;
I will cut off every evildoer
from the city of the Lord.

I honestly love the moments when the biblical authors go full unfiltered and tell us what’s really on their mind, and this is one of those times. But let’s be real, when you are living with integrity, there is nothing more frustrating than NON-integrity! David rightly recognizes the chaos that is created when we cannot depend on one another, when we can’t distinguish truth from falsehood, and he wants that removed from his kingdom and for it to have no influence on God’s people. Let’s call this the biblical case for leaving a bad Yelp review!

It’s an awkward thing to have little to nothing in common with men and women who lack integrity. But it’s a devastating thing to be just like them in that lack of integrity. David was unable in his own heart and in his own kingdom to fulfill the righteous requirement of God to walk blamelessly and with integrity, but there came a man who answered that call

But the gift is not like the trespass. For if by the one man’s trespass the many died, how much more have the grace of God and the gift which comes through the grace of the one man Jesus Christ overflowed to the many. —Romans 5:15

I pray we take time this week to meditate on God’s righteousness. In fact, go back and read Psalms 93-100, the same psalms David read to pen psalm 101. Allow the Spirit to prick our hearts and show us where we are living a double life and lacking integrity and dare to hope this week that you might live differently than the world around you and so follow the example of Jesus, our new and better David.