Daniel 6 - Personal Value and Professional Ethics
Tom Shrader teaches from Daniel 6 about personal integrity in the midst of cultural corruption. Using Daniel's example of consistent faithfulness despite pressure from jealous administrators, he shows how believers should be distinguished by their ethical behavior. He emphasizes that integrity makes us predictable in good ways and calls Christians to live differently not for the sake of being different, but because God has changed their hearts.
“As Christians, we are to be different than the people around us, and people ought to be able to look at us and notice and see something that's different.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: How to be Exceptional in an Average World
Recorded: April 21, 2011
Duration: 39 min
Themes: integrity, ethics, faithfulness, character, consistency, witnessing, holiness, distinction, facing workplace pressure, standing alone, professional challenges, being different, new believer, struggling with compromise, workplace ethics, peer pressure
Scripture: Daniel 1:3, Daniel 6, Matthew 5, 1 Corinthians 15, Hebrews 11, Deuteronomy 6, Mark 15
Theological Themes: sanctification, becoming holy, christian witness, biblical ethics, moral theology, spiritual distinctiveness, christian character, holy living
Full Transcript
Session five of our six-session series. Next week is it, and then we'll start something new right after that. No clue what it'll be, but it'll be good. The series is titled "How to be Exceptional in an Average World." The premise is really simple: mediocrity has become something we're addicted to. We're addicted to mediocrity - what does it take to get by, all of that kind of stuff. And we even adjust to it. We're so concerned about fairness. Fairness seems to be the new word now.
We're going to talk today about personal value and ethics. In the midst of, I'm a college football fan, 133 days till Iowa's first game. I mean, that's important stuff. Finally, that's the best thing about baseball starting - we know we're close to college football.
An Ethical Oil Spill in College Athletics
The other day, one of the college presidents was commenting on athletics. It's been a rough year for, even at Iowa, we had the 13 kids that ended up in the hospital. Not sure what that was. Probably one of the premier teams in all of college football, Ohio State has a huge scandal. And a guy who's very high profile, and I would say of the coaches I've been around, the most vocal Christian, and he's got himself in a little bit of a jam.
I know, you can tell what happened. I knew he was in trouble when his first answer was, when this came up, "I didn't know who to call." That's his first response: "I don't know who to call." Well, I'm not a college football coach, but I would either do one of two things. This is a tip for you too, it's your job. You don't know who to call? Look who signs your check. That'd be one place to start. Go to them and say, "I think we got a problem, what do you think?" Or, if you're in the athletic department, there's this guy that's called an athletic director. Go to them.
College president looking at this said, "We have an ethical oil spill in college athletics." One guy went on and just said, "And they are as competent to clean it up as Donald Trump is to be the Archbishop of Canterbury." Don't know how you feel about all that.
A World of Nuclear Giants and Ethical Infants
It is not a new thing. I don't know, and this is where I grapple with life - I don't know if everything's more visible. I don't know if we're older. I don't know if it's 24-7 coverage.
Omar Bradley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff 60, 70 years ago, said, "The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants."
Here's the premise of this series: as Christians, we are to be different than the people around us. The people ought to be able to look at us, and they ought to notice and see something that's different. I've got a whole bunch of statistics here, and I don't need to read them to you, because all it's going to do is just confirm what you already know - that we're in real tough shape.
Everyone Else Has the Problem
A managing editor of Personnel Magazine was talking about a survey that they had done among companies regarding this. He said, "There was little consensus about the reason for unethical behavior, and even less about what to do about it." The one place, this is interesting, where nearly every respondent agreed is that they didn't have a problem of ethics in their own department. So they were lying on the survey, interestingly enough.
In the mid-70s, Billy Graham looked around and said, "Everybody has a little Watergate in them." Now, what we know is that's called what? Sin. That's who we are, humanly. The Bible explains it.
The Biblical View of Human Nature
The Bible says that we don't come in as some... there are different views of how we come into the world. There's one view, kind of the tabula rasa view, that we come in as a blank slate, and then people, environment, begin to write on us and they shape us. The dominant cultural view probably is that man's basically good with a little bit of evil.
The Bible, the biblical view, is that man is evil, sinful. You never have to teach your kids to lie. You have to teach them to tell the truth. You don't have to teach them to do the things that are wrong - they do that instinctively. And that's a huge problem that we have.
And we all, and this is a deeper problem, as we begin to live it out, we tend to always view ourself as a victim and never the villain. I'm the other day driving down the 101. I'm going 75, and they are blowing by me like I'm standing still. Now, if a police officer stopped me, speed limit 65, my flinch would be to say, "What? Well, go get those guys. They're faster than me. Go catch yourself a real criminal." And he's going to say, "I did. You're going 75. It should have been 65." See that? See how that works?
Systemic Cultural Problems
It's international. One of the vice presidents of an international company said, "The strength of our commitment to the high level of ethical business behavior has deteriorated almost in direct proportion to the declining social values." So the lack of civility. You have a systemic problem when a six-year-old kindergartner brings a gun to school. You got something fundamentally wrong with a whole culture.
It's all around you. I found this. I'm going to admit to something you, some of you do, but you'd never admit it. I read the New Times. And whenever I'm in a restaurant by myself or waiting for an appointment, I'll grab the New Times. And I'll go to the sections in the back, the classifieds. You know, man seeking woman, woman seeking man, all of that.
This was in, this was under man seeks man: "Cross-dressing gay white male seeks bisexual white female." So I'm all right with it so far. I mean, I get it. It's the next sentence that's going to... "Must be emotionally stable." I can't write that stuff. There's no reason to be hopeful.
In this mix, so we've had enough fun. Let's get serious. In this mix, the characteristic that's...
What's going to distinguish us from the rest of the world is what we call integrity. The quality or state of being of moral principle, a code of conduct, an ethic. And we have an example.
If you have Bibles, you can open to the book of Daniel. I'm going to give you a little history. We're looking at something that took place 586 BC. What's happened is that the nation of Israel has been conquered. As Nebuchadnezzar, the king, conquered these people, he set out an edict and an order to his guys, to his chief of his officials, his chief of staff.
The King's Plan for Assimilation
It's Daniel chapter one, verse three. We're going to end up in chapter six, but this is the background. "Then the king ordered Aspenash, the chief of the officials, to bring in some of the sons of Israel, including some of the royal family and of the nobles. Youth in whom there was no defect, good looking, showing intelligence in every branch of wisdom, endowed with understanding and discerning knowledge, who had the ability to serve in the king's court. And he ordered him to teach them the literature and the language of the Chaldeans. The king appointed for them a daily ration from the king's choice of food and from the wine which he drank, and appointed that they should be educated three years at the end of which they would enter into the king's personal service."
So here's what he says. Go and get the brightest youth with the most potential. Part of having potential is a proven track record. So they're bred correctly. They're the nobles. They're the ones who have understanding and wisdom. And here's what we're going to do.
You see it in there. We're going to take these guys and we're going to give them our diet. We're going to teach them our literature. They're going to learn our language. They're going to learn our customs, our ways, and we will take them and we'll assimilate them into our culture.
Now, I'm all in for assimilation. Not a big diversity guy, too much diversity, not good. You need unum pluribus unum, one from many, one. When you lose that basic core, we talked about this a couple of weeks ago, you lose that basic core of beliefs, you're in trouble as a culture. What he wants to do is assimilate them, but he's got some problems because he has to break down their religious, therefore ethical behavior. So he says, the way I'm going to do that is I'm going to bring you in and make you one of us.
A New King with New Priorities
Turn to chapter six. Now, let me give you a background here. Nebuchadnezzar's died. Belshazzar has been captured, the Medes and the Persians have overthrown him, and there's a new king in town, and his name is Darius.
So this guy comes with a blank slate, he doesn't have any of his baggage. He's coming in, and his whole desire here is to rule, and his main concern, and it's always the concern of government, his main concern is cash flow. And for a government, cash flow only comes from one place, where does it come from? So he wants to make sure that I'm getting all I'm due.
Verse 1, "It pleased Darius to appoint 120 satraps throughout the kingdom, with three administrators over them, one of them is Daniel." So the org chart has these 120 guys, let's just make it easy, break them up in threes, so we got 40 guys with a guy over them, Daniel's one of them. "The satraps were accountable to them so that the king might not suffer loss." So this is his checks and balances.
Daniel's Exceptional Qualities
"Now Daniel so distinguished himself among the administrators and the satraps by his exceptional qualities that the king planned to send him over the whole kingdom." So the new org chart was going to go like this, it was going to go king, Daniel, and then whatever else was left.
The king has no interest in Daniel's God. He's at best neutral, more likely antagonistic, but what he loves is the effect that a relationship with that God has on Daniel. What distinguishes Daniel, and he speaks about it, if we were to study those first five chapters we'd see it all over, is that relationship of God, it's just like you and me.
So that what the Bible teaches us, over and over again, is we're to live in such a way that people see our good works. So in your office, the boss should say, if you're a follower of Christ, let's go ahead and talk about what a Christian is.
What Makes a Christian
A Christian is not just somebody who's affiliated with the church, or a Christian is not somebody who's associated with a denomination, a Christian does not become a Christian by good works. Christianity at its core is about doctrine, not behavior. It's about what we believe, not how we behave. Now because we believe this way, we'll behave that way. But what makes you a Christian is not you do this, or don't do this, or oh no, what makes you a Christian is you believe that you've sinned, your sin has separated you from God, and God was justified in sending you to hell for eternal punishment, but He's chosen to send His son Jesus, that's what tomorrow's all about, to die on the cross, and then on Sunday, to rise from the dead, to prove that Jesus is who He said He was, and that His death accomplished what He said it would do, and that's pay the price for your sin. And if you believe that, that's it, that's it, that's Christianity right there.
First Corinthians 15, I think at Easter this year we're going to, it kind of gets back in there eventually, it's kind of a resurrection chapter, but Paul says in there, if Christ didn't rise from the dead, then this is a gigantic waste of time. But we're alright with that. If you're here today, skeptical, ambivalent, antagonistic, any of the things, and you want to bring down a house of cards, just disprove the resurrection, and we're all done. That's the core of the Christian faith.
How Faith Affects Everything
Now when I come into this relationship with Christ, it affects everything. And it's certainly going to affect how I behave, and it's going to manifest it in everything I do. If you're a parent, it's going to affect how you parent. If you're a kid, I just had a meeting
Yesterday, I think 500 junior high and high school kids over to camp, we're in the second week of June I think this year, and we just had a meeting on what are we going to talk about. I'm trying to extract myself from a lot of it, and so I'm doing three sessions out of the six, and really one's "we're glad you're here," and the other is "be careful on the bus going home." But I'm doing the one in the middle on relationships.
My point is, listen, if you're a kid who's a Christian, and you aren't obeying your parents, then you're disobedient to God. Not the parents, you're disobedient to God. Those are the chain of command. If you're a Christian and you're single, it affects the way you date. If you're a wife, it affects the way you wife. If you're a husband, it affects the way you husband. It affects everything.
So one of the great things, I've been on this campaign forever, and I can't seem to get to first base on it. We need to break down the idea that our faith is segregated to a Sunday morning or a Thursday morning or Wednesday morning Bible study. It should affect every area of your life, and it becomes one of your strongest assets in all areas of your life.
Faith Makes You Predictable in the Best Way
So Daniel's faith endears him to the king, but I want to again see it, though the king doesn't want anything to do with Daniel's God. It's like people who want all the benefits of a relationship with God without any of the responsibilities. So here's the second thing. When you have integrity, there's a sense in which you become predictable. That's a good thing, stable. We know how you're going to respond.
Chapter six, verse four: "At this, the administrators and the satraps try to find grounds for charges against Daniel in his conduct with government affairs, but they're unable to do so. They could find no corruption in him because he was trustworthy and neither corrupt nor negligent."
Finally, these men said, "We're never going to find any basis for charges against this man, Daniel, unless it has something to do with the law of God."
The Jealous Plot Against Daniel
Here's what they said: He's going to do everything he's supposed to do. He's not going to do anything he's not supposed to do. And so what they want to do is they want to destroy him. They see what the king's about to do. So here's a hundred and whatever it is, 121 jealous guys, and they want to do Daniel harm. So they pull all the resources, some of the most powerful men in their country, pull all of the resources and they say, let's trap this guy.
And after trying to do this, here's what they say. They say, there's no way we're going to catch this guy. His only flaw, and it's a fatal flaw, is he always does what God says to do. So they say, we got a real dilemma here. Because typically you just catch him. You just catch him with a hidden camera or something.
There's no better example, and there's probably a lot of them, but there's no better example than Gary Hart a few years ago when he said, listen, because he was accused of having these issues. He had a press conference and said, "Just follow me." He lasted 12 hours before they found him with Donna Rice on the back of Monkey Business. Now, I'm not, I'm just saying, you're guilty of being stupid if nothing else. If you say follow me, they're going to do it. But we all have, the point is, we all have those issues. They can't find anything with Daniel. They said, if we're going to get Daniel, it's going to be in this area.
The Trap Is Set
So look at verse six. "So the administrators and the satraps went as a group." You'll see that phrase a couple times. They go as a group. It's mob psychology. I watched the other night The Passion of the Christ, because I haven't seen that movie in a while and I want to watch it tomorrow to kind of get ready for tomorrow night. But one of the things you see in that graphically among many things is the mob. The things that you do as a mob that you maybe would never do as an individual.
The mob comes and they say, "King Darius lived forever. The royal administrators, prefects, satraps, advisors, and governors have all agreed that the king should issue an edict and enforce the decree that no one who prays to any God or man during the next 30 days except you." So here's what he says. He comes. This is very appealing. Here's what we want to do. King, you're amazing. And we don't want anybody to worship anything or anybody or any God but you.
Now what are they trying to do? They know Daniel won't do that, can't do that, and will continue to worship his God and gotcha. But they come to the king and that's very appealing.
The Irreversible Decree
"Now, oh king, issue the decree," this is key now, "put it in writing so it can't be altered in accordance with the laws of the Medes and the Persians," and here's what's key, "it can't be repealed." So Darius does it.
So they come to him, they appeal to him, and again, it's that whole power thing. We always say, essentially, if you're dealing with a guy, the areas that he's going to be vulnerable are gold, money, glory, power, and girls, sex. Well, this is the power card. I don't care about this royal wedding much. The William guy seems like a nice enough guy, Kate seems really cute to me, but are you kidding me? All this? It's just not my deal. When they call you a prince or king, it's got to work on your brain a little bit. When everybody's holding doors and you say hot chocolate and it's there.
So there's a saying that goes, power corrupts and what? Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Now here's what we know. We know that's not true. Because the only absolute power we have in the whole universe is God, and He's clearly not corrupt. Humanly, we're vulnerable here.
So they come to the king, they play the card, and they get him to go, that's the law, and the law of the Medes and the Persians, and that's what it means is there's no appeal.
Daniel's Response to Crisis
There's no repeal, there's no way to deal with this whole process. So the king answered, and he says in verse 13, "The decree stands."
Let me go back to verse 10. "Now, when Daniel learned that this decree had been published, he went upstairs to his room, where the windows were open toward Jerusalem, three times a day, got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to God, just as he had done before."
I don't want to make too big a point here, but I do want to at least make the observation. Daniel did not all of a sudden rally and petition and picket. Daniel did what he's always doing. There's always a place for that. But Daniel does not make any sort of dramatic statement here. He just does what he's doing every day. He does what they knew he would do. And he prays.
The Trap Springs
"And then these men went as a group and found Daniel praying and asking God for help. So they went to the king, and they spoke to the king about his decree." And he said, "Did you not decree that during the next 30 days, anyone who prays to any god except you, O king, will be thrown into the lion's den?" He says in verse 13, "The decree stands in accordance with the laws of the Medes and the Persians. We can't undo this. Yes, absolutely."
Then they said, "King, Daniel"—now you get a little insight here. Here's how they identify him. There's bigotry, prejudice, jealousy here. "Daniel, who is one of the exiles from Judah, pays no attention to you, O king, or to the decree you put in writing. He still prays three times a day."
The King's Distress
When the king heard this, look at this reaction now. He was greatly—what does your translation say? Distressed. Distressed, okay. Now that's, to me, an unusual response, because typically somebody in that authority wouldn't be distressed. What would they be? Mad. "Who are you to question me? Who are you to come around me? Who are you to not take my word and internalize it?" He's distressed because he has this magnificent love for Daniel.
He's greatly distressed. And he's determined to rescue Daniel. He made every effort until sundown to save him. And then the men went as a group—third time we've seen it—to the king and they said, "Remember, O king, according to the law of the Medes and the Persians, no decree or edict that the king issues can be changed."
Verse 16: "So the king gave the order and Daniel was brought to the lion's den. And the king"—it almost sounds like a prayer—said, "May your God whom you serve continually rescue you."
A Fatal Flaw That's Actually Faith
Let me just make a couple of points and try to tie this together as we move through it. Their indictment of Daniel and his fatal flaw: he always does what God says. And the king is working intimately with him, identifies him as someone who continually serves God.
Just out of curiosity, if we went to the office with you today or to the neighborhood with you, or here you go, or Sunday when all the family knows you better than anybody—all the families together—is that the way they would describe us? I get we're not perfect, but would people see that? "Let your good works be displayed in such a way that they"—people would see, Matthew 5—"that people would see it and then glorify your Father in heaven." So your charge and mine is to make the invisible God visible.
Making God Visible in Daily Life
Let's finish and speak the truth boldly. So here we go. So when you walk in—I don't know what you do. You have clients, you go in, you deal with these people. When you walk away and they're talking about you—and you know they are—they're going, "You know what? She's a little bit different than everybody else that comes in here. He's very different. I don't know." Even if they can't go, "Bing, this is it," they'll go, "There's something different about that person." There's something different about you.
The King's Impossible Position
The king realizes there's nothing he can do here. He's caught. He's a little bit, by the way, like Pilate. I was putting this together—he's a little like Pilate in the sense that every verdict that Pilate renders on Jesus is that He's innocent. But Mark tells us in Mark 15 that here's at the end, here's what he wanted to do: he wanted to please the people. So at the end, though, you can see Darius. If Darius could do this, he'd let him go. But he's more concerned about the people here, this power base.
"May your God whom you serve continually rescue you." A stone was brought and placed over the mouth of the den. The king sealed it with his own signet ring and the ring of the nobles so that Daniel's situation might not be changed. So again, the stone comes, the hot wax comes, the signet ring. And that speaks and says, "You can't break this. If you break this seal, you're intervening, interrupting in the business of the king. And you'll pay a price for that."
A Sleepless Night in the Palace
Then the king returned to his palace and spent the night. Look how he spent his night: no food and no entertainment. And he couldn't sleep. One of the commentators said, "The only solid sleep in Babylon that night was in the lion's den." The satraps, the administrators, they were anxious. Probably Daniel's friends were anxious. Certainly the king—we got it right straight there. He can't eat. You see the distress there? Can't eat, can't sleep. Don't turn on that TV. No dancing with the stars for him tonight.
Dawn and Desperate Hope
Look what happens, verse 19: "At the first light of dawn, the king got up and hurried to the lion's den, and he came near the den and he called to Daniel in an anguished voice. 'Daniel, servant of the living God, is your God whom you serve continually been able to rescue you from the lion's den?'"
I find that amazing. Into the lion's den you go. It's capital punishment. You're not going to make it through the night. They know what's going to happen.
to happen. And yet Daniel's relationship with his God is so compelling that even the king is beginning to wonder, is there any chance at all? Statistical probability, zero. But any chance outside of that, because this God you serve must be something really extraordinary. Daniel, any chance you're in there?
And from the inside, you hear Daniel saying, "Get me out of here." No, no, no. That would have been good. You hear Daniel say, "O king, live forever. My God sent His angels and He shut the mouths of the lions. They haven't hurt me because I was found innocent in sight, nor have I done anything wrong before you, O king." And the king was overjoyed. And he gave the orders to lift Daniel out of the den. And when Daniel was lifted out from the den, there was no wound found on him because he had trusted in his God.
Now, it's interesting that the commentaries, especially as you get into liberal commentators, try to explain this away. And one of the most, to me, humorous, interesting explanations is that Daniel was in cahoots with the guys who handled the lions. And right before Daniel went in, they just fed the lions really, really full so that they weren't interested in Daniel. Doesn't sound plausible, but let's say that happened. Here you go. They got their appetite back very quickly.
The Fate of Daniel's Accusers
Daniel was brought in. The guys who had falsely accused Daniel were brought in and thrown into the lion's den along with their wives and children. And before they reached the floor of the den, the lions overpowered them and crushed all their bones. And Darius issues this decree.
Then in verse 25, wrote to all the people, nations, men of every language throughout the land, "May you prosper greatly. I issue decree that in every part of the kingdom, people may fear and reverence the God of Daniel, for He is the living God and He endures forever. His kingdom will not be destroyed. His dominion will never end. He rescues and He saves, performs signs and wonders in heavens. He rescued Daniel from the power of the lions." And Daniel prospered during the reign of Darius and the reign of Cyrus of Persia.
The Problem with Happy Endings
Now, I'm going to tell you, you know me, I don't like that ending. I don't like that Daniel gets out of the lion's den and I got nothing against Daniel. But the problem is this, and it happened earlier too. It happened in chapter three. The Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego go into the fire and they get out. And that irritated me too for this reason.
Not that I got a problem with these guys. The problem is I know how you think because I think that way. You look at them, they obeyed, they got out of the fire. You look at them, Daniel obeyed, he got out of the lion's den. So your sick little brain goes like this: if I obey, God will rescue me from whatever I'm in. See, I don't like that. Because that's simply not true.
My daughter, Sarah, those of you that have been around a long time, you know this. When she was a junior, I guess, in high school, sophomore, she was in a really bad car accident. Three guys, stolen pickup truck, drinking beer, ran a red light, T-boned her. It was the only time Susan and I had been out of town separately. It was a Friday, I dropped her off at the airport, and she said, "I don't feel good about this," and I said, "Nothing's going to happen." I'm always right.
God Is Good Regardless of Outcomes
So, I'm driving down, Sarah has brain seizures, lots of problems. After a few days, she starts to get better, and here's what I heard. I had all my friends and people from the church and all this stuff, and here's what they would say: "Sarah's getting better, isn't God good?" So, I heard that so often, that I did a message that was titled, "God is good, even if Sarah dies."
The outcome in your life is not a referendum on God. We know He's good. That's not the problem. Eventually, you always run into these things, and again, I talk about my stuff with Susan. This is getting very hard for me to be part of, very hard to watch. It's very sad to see her, to see her this week and this frail for so long, but this isn't a referendum on God.
When we started this process, here's what Susan prayed: "Father, I want to see, because Haley was pregnant, I'd like to see the first baby, Brayden, I'd like to see Brayden be born." She's seen Brayden, Gracie, Yale, Reagan, Brooklyn, and Lucy now. So you can't go, "Wow, God didn't answer that prayer."
See, I think God's doing stuff all the time, and somehow, we miss it, and I understand mystery, but listen, God is good.
The Two Sides of Faith in Hebrews 11
As you read through Hebrews 11, there's all these magnificent moments where God intervenes, does these great things. Well, in fact, I'll just go ahead and read it to you. God intervenes, does all these amazing things, and so you read about Abraham and Moses and Joseph and all of the stuff that goes with it.
And he says, in verse 32, "What should I say?" He begins to say, here's all these other guys who by faith conquered kingdoms, performed acts of righteousness, obtained the promise, shut the mouth of lions, a reference to Daniel, quenched the power of the fire, escaped the edge of the sword from the weakness. They were made strong, became mighty in war. Women received back their dead by resurrection.
That's Hebrews 11, and we're to the midway part of verse 35. So here's all these, what we might call victories, wins, God intervenes. Now, we're in the hall of fame of faith. These are the mighty men and women of God.
But there's a change there. "Others were tortured, not accepting the release, so that they might obtain a better resurrection. And others experienced mocking and scourging and chains and imprisonment. They were stoned." That word had a different meaning then. "They were sawn in two. They were tempted. They were put to death with the sword. They went about in sheepskins, goatskins, destitute, afflicted, ill-treated."
God does not give you, in an earthly sense, always the happy ending, but He'll always give you what's best for you and what's best for
His glory. So in this sense, it always has a happy ending, because for us who are Christians, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.
That's what I don't like about this story. Even when we teach it, and we teach it to the three, four, five, six-year-olds, over and over again. What I don't like is, it has this happy ending. And humanly, we're going to flinch to, if I do this, God will do that. And that's not a bartering system.
Five Practical Steps for Living Your Values
**Number one, figure out what your core values are.** What are those things that really, there's just not a lot of flinch in you? You're not going to compromise on them. And it's best to do those, we love to predetermine, in some ways, our decisions, to do those in the calm of a thought process. So we would say, as we're dealing with a student, let's say a girl, we would say, if you're trying to figure out, in a relationship with a guy, how far you're going to go physically, you do that at home, in the calm of the moment, rather than in the backseat of the car. Because once you get to that point, wherever that line is, it's going to be further than you'd make it. And we can talk about what that line ought to be, but that's different.
**Number two, place your values in your desktop.** All we're saying there is Deuteronomy 6, as the Jews would do. They're taking, and what they're doing is, they're keeping the word ever before them. So, pre-decide your decision.
There's a survey that was done. Would you accept a gift from a supplier worth $100? 40%, and the implication here is this is inappropriate. 40% said yes. How about $500 in cash? 25% said yes. How about a free vacation? Idea is a quid pro quo here. A third said yes. So, what are you selling yourself off? This seems weird to me. You're for sale for 100 bucks? That's a good deal.
**Three, strain all your decisions through your value grid.** We added that, because it's amazing to me how many people do step one and step two, but then not apply that practically. So, you're going to take your decisions and go, wait a minute, am I making a decision that's contrary to my basic values here?
Daily Opportunities to Compromise
**Four, resist the temptation to sell your soul.** There's going to be all sorts of opportunities to compromise. Years ago, I had left Coldwell Banker, and I was trying to negotiate for something I wanted to buy, and the guy said, we give a discount to the businesses. Weren't you at Coldwell Banker? I said, yeah. And he said, do you have one of your old calling cards? I said, I got to buy some, I never gave them out. And he said, well, give me one of your old calling cards and I can get you the discount. And I said, but I don't work there. He said, just give me the card. And I said, I'm not going to give you the card.
Now, the other day, I did. I gave a gal, my bill was $6.80. I was at the hospital eating. And I gave her a 10, and she gave me back $13 or something. And I said, you did it wrong. She said, no, I didn't. I said, hey, babe, this is for your benefit. Now, I'm not some super saint here. I'm just saying, those options are going to pop up all around you to do this.
**And it's the last thing. Value your character more highly than compromise.** George Washington said, let us raise up a standard to which the wise and honest can repair and the rest is in the hands of God.
The Simple Test for Right and Wrong
So we say it all the time. Think of, this is really good. I found this in dealing with rough dilemmas with adults is think what you'd tell your kids and then do that, assuming you're relatively normal in the way you deal with your kids. So it is amazing how we'll tell our kids, don't do that. And yet we'll go and do the same thing. If everybody was jumping off the bridge, would you jump off the bridge? And then you'll go out and you'll make huge decisions based on how you'll be perceived by your peers, by the marketplace.
When we talk about morals and ethics and values, here's the principle, it's real simple, is that we should look and act differently, not for the sake of being different. This is not, by the way, to just be at odds with everything around you. It simply says that when God changes your heart and changes your life, you're going to live differently and the people around you should see it.
Standing Out in a Dark World
If they can't see it, if there's not some version of people saying to you, why are you so different? You should hear that. And if you're not hearing that on a regular basis, you should take an inventory and just see. Because in this world, here's the good news. This world is dark, dark, dark, and getting darker. The good news there is it takes very little light to shine in the midst of this. So you should stand out.
You got that code and then you live it and God's going to figure it out. And I know that's simplistic, but it's true. And so that's how we live. One more session, we'll cover it next week.
Father, take these truths, climb to our heart, change our lives. God, let us be good representatives of You. Let our love for You shine through, let people see our good works and then glorify You, our Father who's in heaven. We pray that in Jesus' name, amen.