I want, by the grace of God,
to talk to you this morning about your conscience. There's a lot of talk about conscience
these days. Is it right to follow your conscience?
Should your conscience be your guide as you make your pilgrimage
through this world? What is the conscience? What
does it do? Should I trust my conscience? In these days in
which we live, any time men want to rally other men and women
around a particular cause, they frequently appeal to conscience.
And they want you to, by following your conscience, do what they
ask you to do. When our president recently wanted
to persuade public opinion to give support to beginning the
bombing campaign in Czechoslovakia because of the terrible atrocities
that had been committed against the people of Kosovo, he said,
the atrocities have awakened the American conscience. I have
a book in my library by the late Barry Goldwater called The Conscience
of a Conservative. Larry Flint, a few weeks ago,
you'll remember, was on trial in Cincinnati, Ohio again, publisher
of Hustler Magazine, and he had the audacity to justify and defend
his arguing in court for his right to peddle smut to everybody
on the basis of conscience. Conscience. Yesterday I read
a brief portion of an article written by some woman somewhere,
I forgot her name, wasn't important. She was less important than the
article. But she said she was defending and calling for men
and women to recognize and to accept properly feminism, abortion,
and homosexuality, and she appealed to the reader's consciences,
insisting that conscience demands that we support such things.
In the religious world, multitudes, multitudes base their hope with
regard to eternity. Multitudes base their hope of
acceptance before God on the Day of Judgment. Some of you
sitting here, I have no doubt, base your hope before God upon
your conscience. You think you have a good conscience,
and therefore you will be accepted of God. Do you, after all, have
a good conscience? Do I? Does the Word of God have
anything at all to say about this matter of the conscience?
Indeed, it does. As a matter of fact, the Word
of God makes numerous, numerous references to the conscience,
just in the New Testament. We have the scripture speaking
of a good conscience, a conscience void of offense, an accusing
conscience, an excusing conscience, a conscience that's weak, a conscience
that's pure, a defiled conscience, a seared conscience, an evil
conscience, a purged conscience, and even a perfect conscience.
What kind of conscience do you have? What kind of conscience
do I have? What do our consciences really
tell us about ourselves? Those questions I want to answer
this morning from the Word of God. A good conscience is something
that everyone wants, but few possess. Do you have a good conscience? Do I? Look at Paul's statement
in Hebrews 13, verse 8. I realize there's some debate
about whether Paul wrote the book of Hebrews or not, and I
really don't know, but I figure it's a whole lot easier to say,
said when I refer to Hebrews, and they say the writer of the
book of Hebrews. So Paul will forgive me if he didn't write
it, and the fellow who wrote it will forgive me if Paul didn't write it. But
this is what the Scripture says here. Hebrews 13, verse 18. Pray
for us. For we trust, we have a good
conscience in all things willing to live honestly. We trust we
have of good conscience. The fact is, and this is the
first thing I'll deal with, it's important, so I'll spend a little
time here, we all do have consciences. Someone said the conscience is
the voice of God in a man's soul. I don't know about that, but
I do know this. God has put a conscience in every
human being which will either accuse us continually or excuse
us continually on the basis of our actions. Conscience is that
voice that's inside you and inside me, that voice which we simply
cannot silence. Now, it is true you can muffle
the voice, you can sear your conscience, but you can't silence
it. Conscience is that faculty of
mind which God has put in every man by which we judge the moral
character of human conduct, both the character of other people's
behavior and the character of our behavior. It is an inborn
sense of right and wrong. Turn to Romans chapter 1. Let
me show you. The conscience is the law of God inscribed upon
man's heart by creation. And though it is defiled and
corrupt, yet it is still the law of God inscribed upon even
the fallen man's heart by creation. The scriptures in Romans chapter
1 are declaring to us the universal guilt of mankind. The apostle
tells us in Romans 1 how that God, by the very creation, has
revealed his power and his Godhead. Now, nobody will ever come to
know God by looking at the stars and looking at the sun. Nobody
will ever come to know God by natural revelation. But God has
established a witness in the heavens so that nobody can honestly
look into the heavens and not see God's power and his wisdom. Nobody. Nobody, likewise, will
ever be justified before God because of his conscience. His
conscience, as I said, is corrupt. But every human being has a God
consciousness. Lindsey expressed it well one
time just recently dealing with the fall of Adam. He said that
men hold the truth in unrighteousness. The word hold in Romans 1 where
it says they hold the truth in unrighteousness means to suppress,
to hold down the truth. Every man says in his heart,
God is. He knows it. I don't care how
big an atheist he is. I don't care how much of an infidel
he is. I'm here to tell you, I'll say it publicly. I'll say
it without fear of contradiction. I'll say it to their face. Any
man who says he doesn't believe God is, is a liar and he knows
it. He's a liar and he knows it. Because God says, in the
heart is the conscience of man that declares he is. And therefore,
in chapter 2 here of Romans, in verse 1, he says, Thou art
inexcusable, O man. You're inexcusable. The revelation
of God then by creation is such as is proper to condemn a man
because men have the light of revelation by creation which
they will not submit to. And because they will not submit
to the light of divine revelation, they are justly condemned. And
then in chapter 2 of verse 14. The apostle is bringing this
matter of condemnation against the Jews because the Jews had
the law and they refused to obey the law. And he says the same
thing is true of the Gentiles who didn't have the law. Look
at it, verse 14. When the Gentiles, which had not the law, that is,
they never received the written law of God, they never received
the tables of stones, the law of God was never given to the
Gentiles, but they do by nature the things contained in the law.
These, having not the law, are a law unto themselves, which
show the work of the law written in their hearts." There it is. Written in your heart by the
finger of God. Written in their hearts, their
conscience also bearing witness in their thoughts, the meanwhile
accusing or else excusing one another. Now this is what Paul
is telling us. All men and women have a sense
of right and wrong, which to a greater or lesser degree reflects
the law of God that is inscribed upon their hearts, so that their
consciences will either accuse them of doing wrong or excuse
them in doing wrong by justifying them in it. But the conscience
reflects the holy law of God and the requirements of God so
that every man knows by nature, not only God is, God is omnipotent,
God is powerful and righteous and wise. This God is holy. He wrote it on your heart. He
wrote it on your heart. Now then, the conscience of man
often produces a sense of guilt, a legal fear. A legal fear and
guilt which many mistake for and take to be Holy Spirit conviction. Turn to John chapter 8. I'll
show you an example. John chapter 8, verse 9. You remember the story. Our Lord
has got this adulterous woman standing in front of Him. These
self-righteous Pharisees have taken her in adultery in the
very act. Every time I read it, almost every time I comment on
it, I always raise the question, I wonder how they manage that.
Caught her in the very act. Looks to me like they were planning
the whole thing. Looks to me like they were involved in it
somehow or another. But they caught her in the very
act, and they brought her down before the Lord Jesus and said, Moses
said, kill her, what do you say? And the Lord Jesus said, whichever
one of you is without sin, go ahead, pick up a rock, start
throwing them at her. And he spoke plainly as only God can
to their hearts. Look at what it says in verse
nine. And they which heard it being convicted by their own
conscience, not convicted by God's spirit, not convicted of
sin, righteousness and judgment, convicted by their own conscience,
went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even to the last.
And Jesus was left alone with the woman standing in the midst.
You see, the conviction of sin. is much more than a sense of
guilt. It is much more than a sense
of your just condemnation. The conviction of sin is much
more than just the idea that somehow you know God's holy and
you're going to hell if you don't do something or he doesn't do
something. The conviction of sin has this revelation of God
the Holy Spirit in your heart, making you to understand your
sin. Your sin because of your unbelief. making you to understand the
accomplishment of righteousness by Jesus Christ's obedience,
making you to understand that judgment has been accomplished
and finished by the redemptive work of the Lord Jesus Christ.
But this conviction that's just, you know, I can't tell you how
many times over the years I've had people, I've had young people,
I've had children, I've had mamas and daddies because their children,
you know, they start having nightmares and they're scared to death they're
going to hell, they want to make a religious profession. That's not conviction. That's just not it. That's not
it. Holy Spirit conviction is something more than a dread of
wrath. Every man passes through that many times during his life.
Every man. And honest folks don't deceive
men because of it. Only dishonest religious hucksters
seize those opportunities and take advantage of a man's soul
to deceive him. Well, what is Holy Spirit conviction? It is
a conviction of your sin. because you haven't believed
the Son of God. It is a conviction that Jesus Christ, the Son of
God, has obeyed God's law perfectly and brought in an everlasting
righteousness such as God demands of you, and you can't produce
a conviction that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, by His shed blood,
has accomplished redemption. I think I told you recently,
it was Adam and Eve's conscience which caused them after the fall
to hide from God in the garden. There's a conscience, a guilty
conscience. Adam and Eve were naked before
they fell, weren't they? Walked around buck naked, wasn't ashamed
of anything. Wasn't ashamed of anything. Had nothing to be ashamed
of. But when they were naked before God after the sin, they
understood they were naked more than just in the sense of their
bodies not having any clothing on them. They realized that their
hearts were naked before God. Oh, and I've got hope for you
when you understand your heart is naked before God. All things
are naked and open to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.
And they've started sewing together fig leaves. And you can understand
something about the depravity of their conscience after the
fall. They really thought they could hide from God behind fig
leaves they stitched together. And that's what all men in religion
do. They're working around making fig leaves for themselves and
presume that they can hide from God by the works of their own
hands. And when God has mercy on the
sinner, this is what he does. He takes the omnipotent finger
of sovereign grace and he strips off the fig leaves. He just strips them off. And
now you're sure enough ashamed. And he puts on you the righteous
garments of his slain sacrifice, Jesus Christ the Lord, and you're
no longer ashamed. Conscious, no longer ashamed.
That's it. That's it. He that believeth, he that builds
on this rock shall not be ashamed. No longer ashamed. Now then,
this is what I'm saying. We must not trust our consciences.
The conscience cannot be trusted any more than the thoughts of
the depraved mind or the emotions of the depraved heart can be
trusted, because our depravity has made us perverse in all our
faculties. The Scriptures tell us plainly
in Hebrews 10.22 that the conscience of the fallen man is an evil
conscience from which we must be cleansed by the blood of Christ.
The Scriptures tell us in Titus 1.15 that the conscience of the
lost religious man is defiled. so defiled, in fact, that he
can have, in a sense, a good conscience while he walks about
with an evil conscience. Well, preacher, what are you
talking about? What are you talking about? You can manage. You can manage
to fix it up so that you can lean on your own righteousness
and your own works, and you can ignore the Word of God and the
revelation of God and walk before God and men with a good conscience
suitable to you without faith. Let's see if I can be good on
that. Turn to Acts chapter 23. Do you remember what our Lord
told his disciples? He said, they shall put you out of the
synagogues. Yea, the time cometh when whosoever killeth you will
think that he doeth God's service. Wow. You mean, you mean, folks,
in the name of Jesus? In the name of God? in the name
of the Lord will persecute other men and think they're doing God's
service? Every day. Every day. Hardly
a day goes by I don't get some kind of letter from a fellow
who killed me if he had the opportunity and could do it without any repercussions. Look at verse 1 of chapter 23.
Here's the Apostle Paul writing about or telling about himself
when he was a persecutor. He said, Now the Scripture says,
Paul, earnestly beholding counsel, said, Men and brethren, I have
lived in all good conscience before God until this day. In chapter 26, verses 9 and 10,
he says, I barely thought with myself. That's when you get in
trouble. I barely thought with myself
that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus
of Nazareth. He said, I thought I was doing
God's service when I consented to the death of God's servant
Stephen. In chapter 9 of Romans, verse 1, the apostle appeals
to his conscience and appeals to God as his witness. He says,
my conscience bears me witness, and my conscience was bearing
me witness when I was wishing myself a curse from Christ. When
I was persecuted in the Church of God and wishing that I knew
nothing about it, this man, Jesus Christ, did not exist. My conscience
bore me witness. The Apostle Paul, guiding by
divine inspiration, tells us that when he was persecuting
the Church, wishing himself a curse from Christ, his conscience bore
him witness, and he was fully convinced he was doing the right
thing. Fully convinced. Look in 1 Timothy chapter 4.
Some men and women are so hardened by freewill works religion or
by their ungodly behavior, either way, same thing, often by both,
their freewill works religion and their ungodly behavior, that
they live with a seared conscience. The word seared, it's not a word
we use much these days. But if you were a cattleman,
and you used a branding iron, that's the word. It means to
cauterize. You've seen the old westerns.
Somebody had to perform some kind of surgery, take a bullet
out of a fellow, and take that bullet out and get an iron red
hot and lay it on him, and cauterize it to keep it from bleeding anymore. Stop the bleeding right now.
Just cauterize it. This is what he's saying. First Timothy chapter
1, or chapter 4 rather, verse 1. Now the Spirit speaks expressly
that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith,
giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils. Religious
folks, religious folks. And doctrines of devils is not
necessarily demon worship. Doctrines of devils is not necessarily
some kid sitting around a campfire deciding they want to become
vampires because they've been smoking the wrong stuff, right?
That's not it. The doctrines of devils, any doctrine takes
you away from Christ. The doctrines of devils speaking
lies and hypocrisy. having their conscience seared
with a hot iron, the hot iron of works religion. Now, how do
you know that's what he's talking about? Because they forbid to
marry. Say, if you want to be holy now, you can't marry. If
you want to be really holy, you've got to separate yourself from
worldly things, carnal things. You've got to, you know, the
wickedness is out yonder. The problem with you is not what's
in you, but what you do. That's the problem. And that's
not just Catholicism, Gary, that's the whole blooming religious
world, the whole world. The problem is outside. If you
could just not do this, not do that, everything would be all
right. This is what it says. Forbidding to marry and commanding
to abstain from meats, which God has created to be received
with thanksgiving of them that believe and know the truth. The
Apostle is here telling us about men and women, even children,
who have consciences which are so cauterized, so hardened, that
they are past feeling. They have no regard for the rightness
or wrongness of what they do. They have no conscience for anything.
Talk to them all you want to. It's like pouring water off a
duck's back. They don't pay any attention. They don't care. They
don't give a hoot. They've hardened their hearts.
Their consciences are cauterized, past feeling. John Gill wrote
under a cloak of sanctity, they commit the most shocking impiety. If you work at it, you can hold
down the truth of God long enough and persistently enough that
you can cauterize your conscience. You can so seal your conscience,
so harden yourself, that your conscience will excuse your wickedness
and justify you in it, either accusing or excusing themselves. That's the way man's conscience
is. It's depraved. So we must never trust our consciences.
Let us ever be careful not to violate our consciences, not
to violate our consciences for anyone. But do not trust your
conscience. He who trusts his conscience,
like he who trusts his heart, trusts the fool and the devil. Our guide in all things must
be the Word of God. Merle, it doesn't matter one
flip what you think about it. What does this book say? It doesn't
matter one flip what my wife thinks about it, what does this
book say? It doesn't matter one flip how it affects me, what
does this book say? It doesn't matter one flip what
the world thinks about it, what does this book say? Nothing else
matters. Nothing else matters. It doesn't
matter how you feel. It doesn't matter what you think.
It doesn't matter what you want. Our basis of rule and right and
wrong is not the world nor ourselves, it is God's Word and God's Word
alone. Otherwise, you just walk about
with a seared, cauterized conscience, justifying yourself in whatever
you want to do. What we all want is a good conscience.
Everybody does. What would you give? What wouldn't
you give to have a conscience? that lets you lay down at night and go to sleep in the immediate prospect of
judgment and eternity. I tell you what you do. I tell
you what you do. I dare you to. I dare you to.
You go home and lay down at night and you try to think to yourself
before you go to sleep about leaving this world. before you
wake up in the morning, standing before God in judgment. You just
try to think about it, and then go to sleep. Go ahead. Go ahead. What would you give
to have a conscience that lets you sleep? Easy. Be at peace
with God. What would you have to have a
conscience that didn't accuse you? that would allow you to
anticipate drawing near to God Almighty in His holiness, who
is a consuming fire with no dread. Oh, what kind of conscience is
that? It's a good conscience. It's
a good conscience. Our consciences, you see, demand
what we can't give. Our consciences demand of us
satisfaction and perfection. As I said at the beginning of
the message, they echo the law of God written on our hearts.
Our conscience demands that we can only have acceptance with
God if we have perfect atonement. We can have acceptance with God
only if we have perfect righteousness. And this perfect righteousness
and perfect atonement is found in the obedience and death of
Jesus Christ as our substitute. Look in Hebrews chapter 10, verse
22. Let us draw near with a true
heart. Oh my soul, God give me a true
heart. Everything will fall into place.
Let us draw near with a true heart. A true heart. A true heart. In full assurance. Full assurance of faith. Having our hearts sprinkled. from an evil conscience, and
our bodies washed with pure water." What on earth is he talking about?
Well, he's alluding to the Old Testament ceremonies, the sprinkling
of the blood, the washing of water. We're talking about the
redemption applied to the heart and the man being sanctified
by the regenerating work of God the Holy Spirit, and both come
together in the person of Christ in his work of grace. When God,
the Holy Spirit, gives you life, he has washed you. When God,
the Holy Spirit, applies the blood of Christ to you, he's
sprinkled your conscience. And now, now, you draw near to God
with full assurance. Full assurance? How can that
be? How can a sinner on this earth
have full assurance? I'll tell you how you don't.
I'll tell you how you don't. It's when you keep looking in
here for it. Keep looking in here. You know, you have a little
trouble. You think, well, I'm not saved. I don't know whether I'm saved
or not. I don't know whether I really trust the Lord or not. I don't
know whether I've really been born of God's Spirit or not. So you
start reading your Bible, and after you've read 20 chapters,
boy, I feel better now. I haven't been praying enough.
You start praying a little more, you set your clock, get up early in the
morning, pray an hour before you go to work. Boy, now I feel better.
Now I feel better. That's works. That works. That's all on earth it is. It
just works. Now pray. By all means do. Read your Bible.
By all means do. But when you look to that for your assurance,
you haven't got any. You haven't got any. Well, let's see. I have some assurance because
I love Bob. My love for you, Bob. I do love you. My love for you is so shot full
of sin, it would take me to hell in a heartbeat. My love for Christ, I do love
it. But my love for Christ is just sin. It'd take me to hell
in a heartbeat. But where do you have assurance?
Him. Just Him. Just Him. That's all. Just Him. If you're out on a stormy sea
and you had a little old boat. I know sailors call them ships,
but I've never been on one of those. You had a little old boat. And
the sea's tossing that boat here and there and everywhere. And
you've got an anchor in the boat just by your biggest boat itself.
And you toss two and throw, and you hold on to that anchor. You
just keep holding on to that anchor. Hold on to that anchor. It's
not going to do you one speck of good. Well, where do you get
any peace? Where do you get any security?
You throw the anchor out of the boat, and it lays hold of a rock. And there you find stability
and peace and security. And Christ is the anchor of our
souls. Not Christ in here, but Christ
on the throne. is the anchor of our soul, though
sure and steadfast. Christ in you, the hope of glory,
the Christ in you, teaches you to cast your hope on Christ sitting
on the throne, whose work is finished, whose redemption is
accomplished. And the Lord Jesus Christ, His
blood, continually sprinkles our hearts from an evil conscience,
so that we stand before God at peace. Our conscience is purged
from our sins and purged from our dead works of religion. So
we trust Christ alone. That's it, brother. Now these things I write unto
you, John said, little children, that you sin not. And if any
man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ
the righteous. And he is, what we read earlier,
the mercy seat, the propitiation for our sins. Or what happens
when a believer sins? Tell me something. When don't
you sin? Go ahead and name it. Go ahead. Name it. Please don't name it
out loud, because I'll have to say you're a liar. That's what
the book says. A man says, I haven't sinned,
he's a liar. He doesn't know the truth. The
truth's not in him. You mean the preacher right now
we're sinning? Every one of us. in our best deeds, shoot, in
our best thoughts. But what happens when a believer
sins? Will you listen carefully? Listen now. Listen. Nothing. Nothing. All that happens in
here. All that happens in here. But
before God Almighty, Oscar, nothing happens. Our acceptance is not
in us. It's in Him. And that's a good
conscience. That's a good conscience. It'll
cause you to walk before God with peace. It'll cause you to
seek in all things to be void of offense before God and men.
It'll cause you to walk before God with faith unfeigned, out
of a pure heart with brotherly love. It'll cause you to seek
the honor of God in everything because Christ has given you
peace, righteousness, redemption, acceptance with God Almighty.
My conscience, it echoes the voice of God, written in His
law, written on my heart. Looking on Christ crucified,
looking on Christ crucified, my conscience says the same thing
the law of God says. That's enough. That's enough. Oh, may God give you a good conscience
by faith in Christ. Amen.