Can money, power or status entice you to compromise? For Daniel the servant of God it was his most important asset.
Transcript
[Darris McNeely] Integrity. A small word with a very big meaning. Yesterday I began a series in talking about Daniel. We focused upon Daniel's story in chapter 5 of Daniel where is the story of Belshazzar's feast, and the so called handwriting on the wall that appears during a time of festivities with Belshazzar, the king of Babylon, and a thousand of his partiers, there in the palace.
This famous picture, Rembrandt painting, shows exactly what that scene may have looked like, or at least the artist's representation of it, as the disembodied hand appeared out of nowhere and began writing on the wall, the plastered wall, "Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin." Daniel came in and he was the only one who could begin to describe to the king and to his partiers exactly what those words meant.
What's interesting to note when you look at the story there in Daniel 5, none of the magicians and sorcerers of Belshazzar could give any meaning to those words. But when Daniel came in, at the bequest of the queen, because he was a man in whom was the spirit, the excellent spirit, of God—his reputation was intact—Belshazzar offered Daniel some money. "Whatever you need," he said. "All the money, all the power and the wealth—just give me the meaning of these words." Daniel looked straight at Belshazzar and he said, "Keep your money, King. I don't need it. Keep your money and give it to someone else." (Daniel 5:15-17)
Daniel was not interested in the money. He was not interested in the power that went with the position and the position within that throne room and what he might accomplish by giving this knowledge to the king. None of that mattered to Daniel. The reason is Daniel had integrity.
Money, power, wealth, really the idols of our own modern world, didn't matter to Daniel. Daniel lived in Babylon. They bowed down to wooden and stone images and they had their own different forms of idolatry, but at the heart of the palace intrigues of that period of time were the same idols that we have today of fame and money and wealth and status. None of that mattered to Daniel. He said keep it king. He had his own integrity and he gave the meaning and Daniel went on.
Integrity, those things that are right there in the heart. The most important matters that define who we are to ourselves and to God. Daniel had a lot of that and he was not about to let anything compromise exactly what he felt about that integrity.
You know we're in the midst of another Presidential campaign race in the United States. Candidates are coming and going. All kinds of stories and accusations are made about candidates, as they are on any given year about their personal character, their morality, their integrity, and their ethics. Charges are brought forth by people from various walks of life. What's true? Who knows? I don't know. You don't know. Maybe it's true, maybe it isn't. But every time someone steps up to be a leader, their integrity is called into question. That will happen with any of us.
The surest thing that you and I can do is to keep our own personal integrity intact. Daniel did that. A small word, but a very, very big subject. What's your integrity?
