Well, it's a delight to be back
among you Michiganders once again. I always look forward to this
time of the year to see your friendly faces, to have an opportunity
to preach to you. This morning I was out on the
porch under that swing on the porch there. I was studying my
notes. Angelina had come out to spend a little time with me.
She says, what are you doing? I said, I'm studying. I got to
preach tonight. She said, study? I said, yeah. It was kind of a moment of silence
and she said, so you won't mess up? Yeah, so I won't mess up. Hebrews chapter 9 and verse 14. How much more shall the blood of Christ, who
through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God,
purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? Now in verses 9 and 14 of Hebrews
chapter 9, and in verse 2 of Hebrews chapter 10, we have the
word conscience, conscience. The word is a common word in
the English language, and it is found many times in the New
Testament. And in the original language,
it generally means distinguishing between what is morally good
and bad, prompting to do the former and shun the latter, condemning
one and commending the other. Now, if you were a Freudian,
your definition of conscience would be the part of the superego. That's the division of the psyche
that is formed through the internalization of moral standards of parents
and society that censors and restrains the ego. You got that? There will be a
test later. Now, the superego is mostly unconscious,
said Freud. It is composed of the ego ideal. That's what makes folks say,
I'm really a good person. It is also composed of the conscience. Now in psychoanalytical lingo,
it is that which judges the ethical nature of one's actions and one's
thoughts. and then transmit such determinations
to the ego for consideration. Conscience, no matter how it
is spoken of or how it is used, has to do with guilt. No matter what, No matter how
it's phrased, in what language, or what psychological babble,
it is simply this. Conscience, your conscience,
my conscience, has to do with guilt. Whether positively or
negatively, it has to do with guilt. If one speaks of not being
able to do something with a clear conscience, he is saying that
he could not do it and be guiltless. If he says that he has a clear
conscience, he is saying that he has no guilt or is not guilty
in the thing that he does. Conscience has to do with guilt. Conscience has to do with knowledge. Whether consciously or subconsciously,
conscience has to do with knowledge of good and evil. The knowledge of good and evil. Now that fact automatically reveals
the origin of our conscience. When Adam, in the Garden of Eden,
Consumed the forbidden fruit, he gained the knowledge of good
and evil. He gained, for worse, a conscience. A conscience. Now, up until that
devastating deed took place, there was nothing in his knowledge
but good. Nothing. Everything in creation
was good, save his loneliness or aloneness, of which there
is no indication that he was aware, though God was aware of
it. His knowledge was all good, even
very good. Even very good. Now, when he
disobeyed God, Evil entered into the world by him, and man has
since been plagued with a conscience. Now conscience, being a thing
that came as a result of the fall, is not a good thing. It came as a result of the fall. It is therefore an evil thing. Because when he failed, he learned
of good and evil. Before that, he only knew good.
So conscience is evil. The singular product of conscience
is always and only guilt. Always. And this is also clearly
revealed in the actions of Adam once conscience became his guide. You who remember the fifties
remember a little dark-haired, dark-eyed singer named Teresa
Brewer. You remember her, Don? She sang
a little ditty back then called, Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide. You better know. You better know. When Adam gained
a conscience, he immediately tried to assuage his guilt by
first covering it with fig leaves. And when that didn't work out
too well, when God showed up on the scene, he hid from the
sting of his conscience and finally ended up blaming someone other
than himself for his problem. For after he was caught finally,
he said, that woman you gave me, she made me do it. Kind of like
Flip Wilson used to say, the devil made me do it. But actually,
that's what Eve said. She said, that serpent you made,
he made me do it. You see, conscience, no matter
how beneficial, and I use that word very loosely, Conscience,
no matter how beneficial it might be in making moral and ethical
judgments concerning behavior, can never bring a person one
iota closer to God by exercising it or obeying it. The conscience is either an accuser
or an excuser, and this is always the case. In Romans chapter 2,
Romans chapter 2, speaking of the Gentiles and
the Gentile mind, and that's us. Romans chapter 2 verses 14
and 15 says, For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, 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 heart, their conscience also bearing witness,
and their thoughts demean, while accusing or else excusing one
another." And you'll notice there's a real connection there with
the concept of the conscience and the principle of law. They're a law unto themselves. That's important to remember.
Now, accusing or excusing is the particular arena in which
free will works religion operates and can never produce perfection
before God as pertaining to conscience, operating within the nature that
man has inherited from Adam. But what religion can do and
often does do, is blind the mind to the effects of the conscience. In 1 Timothy chapter 4 it speaks
of forbidding and marrying and forbidding to eat meats, and
that effectually sears the conscience, or cauterizes the conscience. In Titus 1 verses 9 through 16
it speaks of those who finally profess to know God but do not,
who do not love the truth. Their conscience is sealed or
seared in good works, in the good works that they do. Now
though religion may cauterize the conscience, it can never
perfect it. Conscience operates in the realm
of the broken law. It operates in the realm of the
broken law, in the realm of the transgression, and never in the
realm of spiritual life. Did you hear what I just said?
Conscience never operates in the realm of spiritual life. Never. At the time of Adam's
transgression, the existing law library was minimalist at best. There was just one law. Just
one law. And that law, as all laws, had
a particular design. It was designed to define sin,
to assign blame, And to designate punishment. That's what the law does. You
find another use of it, let me know. Any law, every law, is
for that. That speed limit. I don't know
if there is one out there. Sometimes I wonder when I'm up
here driving. But if there is a speed limit
out there, it's not for those who drive safely and within the
speed. What's it for? If you go above the speed. Then
your sin is defined, blame is assigned, and justice comes forth,
and punishment is executed. That's the only reason that law,
or any law, exists. That's the only reason. The Lord
said in Romans chapter 5 that where there was no law, there
was no imputation of sin. Why? Because where there is no
law, sin is not defined, blame is not assigned, sentence is
not assigned, and punishment is not executed where there is
no law. That the law preceded the crime
that Adam did does not suggest that there was a possibility
that the crime might not be committed, but rather that the crime and
the purpose of God had already been committed. Christ was slain
from the foundation of the world. Why? Because sin existed in the
purpose of God before there was ever a man to commit it. Or else
you've got really one strange thing happen back there in eternity.
Something slipped up on God. Adam was a mutable creature. Now Adam was man at his best,
wasn't he? That was his primary state, as
the best man. So if he mutates, what direction
is he going? If he's as high as he can be
on the realm of humanity, and he changes, what's it going to
be? That's what it's going to be.
Mutation is always downward. Now Adam tried to salve his guilt,
knowing that he had broken the law of God, because God had said,
Thou shalt not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil, for in the day ye eat thereof ye shall surely die, or in dying
ye shall die. And once the deed was done, Adam
proved that any effort of religion, and by the way, all efforts of
religion, apart from grace, no matter by what name it may go. All efforts of religion are designed
to make a person feel better about himself in the flesh. Always. And all that this text said was
dead works. Dead works. Now he did not know, Adam, I
believe, that he was spiritually dead. He surely felt the pains of natural
death because he began to immediately stress and be anxious over this
new thing in his bosom that suddenly made him uncomfortable. at the
thought of being around his Creator. And that thing in his bosom was
the fear of judgment, which is the true fear of death. I don't
believe people really are afraid to die. I've watched too many
people die. Part of the job. Preacher always
gets called to the bedside of the dying. How many hands have
you held on? How many hands have you held
of people that slipped from this world to the next? People aren't afraid of dying.
People are afraid of what comes after death. What our brother read this evening
from John chapter 4, they're afraid of judgment. That's why
they use language like, you know, I wish I'd have been a better
daddy. That's not a fear of death, that's a fear of judgment. I
wish I'd have been a better mama. Why do they say things like that?
Afraid of judgment. You know and I know and every
living creature on the face of the earth, even an Adam in the
Garden of Eden and all his sons in this world know that death
don't end anything. It's the beginning of eternity. And it begins with judgment.
There's an accounting, folks. There's an accounting, and people
understand that. And Adam understood that. He
knew that somehow whatever had happened made him accountable
for his condition. And somehow he felt like, I've
got to do something to undo this. And that's what conscience was
telling him to do. His conscience accused him. His
knowledge of good and evil made him endeavor to make a moral
and ethical choice to undo his aching dilemma, to quiet this
screaming banshee in his bosom. And the end product was that
with each religious effort, whether covering, hiding, or assigning
blame to someone else, he showed for all who are spiritually alive
that the law, no matter the shape or form, can only define sin,
assign blame, determine punishment, and end in guilt. Whatsoever the law saith, it
saith to them that are under the law, that every mouth might
be stopped, and all the word become one. guilty before God. So by the works of righteousness
shall no man be justified in his sight. Shakespeare said conscience
makes cowards of us all. Spurgeon defined conscience as
the sense of past and present sin and the recollection of our
deficient life. And no matter the effort to reform
or change behavior, conscience, the knowledge of good and evil
will always bring you to despair. Read Romans chapter 7. Here the
Apostle Paul, the one who met Christ on the road to Damascus,
was cast out into the dust, blinded by the light of Christ. Through
the preaching of the gospel, the scales were moved and he
went on to preach the gospel in almost everywhere in Asia
and Asia Minor and was responsible for the establishment of almost
every New Testament church that there was in the days of the
Bible. And he said, you know, when I
want to do good, evil is present with me. The will to do is there, but
the power to perform I find not. So I see in my members a law,
a principle of death that everything I touch makes me guilty. Everything I try makes me guilty. And I try to do good. I don't. And I'm guilty. And I get a wild herd and start
going toward evil, and I can't. And I'm guilty. I'm just guilty. Why? Why? It's the conscience. It's all
it can do. That's why at the end of that
wondrous tirade and explanation, true explanation of the conscience,
Paul said, Wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from
the body of this day? Of this day? No matter what, conscience always
brings you to despair. You see, where there is sin,
now listen, where there is sin, there is law. Where there is law, there is
sin. In 1 Corinthians chapter 15,
it says this, the sting of death
is sin, and the strength of sin is law. The law. The strength of sin is the law. You see, where there is sin,
there is guilt, and where is guilt, there is the law, and
where there is the law, there is the conscience. And the conscience
always points to guilt. Now, any preacher who tries to
bring his hearers to the law for righteousness
is entirely discounting, disallowing, and disavowing the work of Jesus
Christ. Any one of them. Any one of them. Any preacher who does so is making
the death of Christ to be no effect to his hearers. He, operating in conscience,
addresses the conscience of men and women, reminding them of
their guilt. He then takes them to the law
so that they might make moral and ethical choices to cover
and hide or blame someone or something else for their guilt,
whether it's in a box or a bottle or a bordello or on the internet. Something's got to be blamed
for this. But whatever it is, you see,
it can't be your fault. It can't be your fault. Unbeknownst
to him, because he is operating from the conscience, it is he
that is declaring to his hearers, in reality, there is no remedy
for sin. A man who brings his hearers
to the law is declaring there is no remedy for sin. Look at
1 Timothy. Paul speaks of some who desire
to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say nor whereof
they affirm, in verse 7 of chapter 1. What does that mean? These
who desire to be teachers of the law don't understand what
they're saying to start with, and they have no idea of the
consequence of their words. They have no idea. Paul says,
but we know that the law is good if it's used lawfully. How is
it used lawfully? If it's declared to be fulfilled
in Jesus Christ. We do not use the law to make
men guilty. We don't have to do that. Their
conscience is already doing that. The law always makes them guilty.
We don't need that. If they're going to be under
the law, they're already guilty. I'll tell you when a man sees
guilt, when he sees sin punished on Calvary's tree, that's when
he understands guilt. And not until. Not until. Because all that other guilt,
he believes that he can undo somehow. You get in a fix. Ever been in
a fix? My brother talked about the big
fix. The tribulation of life as we know it. The troubles that attend every
man that's born of woman in this world. What do we do when we
get in a fix? Us fine Christian folk. We say, I don't know what the
problem is, but I believe I need to pray more. Fiddlies, folks. Need to read my Bible more. Why? So I get out of this fix. Listen,
if you're in a fix, that's where you're supposed to be. It's your
fix. It's yours. God sent it to you
if you're His. Don't try to get out of it. Well,
you know, what are you saying, really? If I was a better person,
nothing bad would happen to me. If I, by my works, can accomplish
to a certain level, I will live a trouble-free life. That ain't
going to work, folks. But you know what's doing that?
Your conscience. Not your spirit. It's your conscience. Always
that way. Always that way. Knowing this,
that the law is not made for the righteous man, But for the
lawless and the disobedient, for the ungodly, for sinners,
for unholy, profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers."
Now he's saying those who say they trust Christ, profess to
trust Christ. yet seek to bring men under the
law and teach them that by the law they achieve righteousness
before God. What they are actually doing
is saying that what Jesus Christ did on Calvary didn't really
change anybody, didn't really save anybody, didn't really justify
anybody. Because no matter what He did,
unless you go to the law, you're still whoremongers. They're taking what Christ has
said is clean. and saying it's not clean. How
do they say it? They say we must go to the law.
And that turns them right back. The law, you see, operates in
the realm of sin. That's where it operates. And
this is specifically what Paul is dealing with in our text.
Boy, that was a long introduction, wasn't it? But it's a short message. Look back at our text, Hebrews
chapter 9. In chapters 9 and 10, Paul is
dealing with this specific thing when he talks about the service
performed toward God by observing the rites and ceremonies of the
law cannot make the comers thereto perfect as pertaining to conscience. These services cannot remove
guilt and in fact excite and exacerbate guilt. If they were
able to remove guilt, they would have ceased to be offered because
the sheer magnitude of the act of removing guilt is such that
once it is done, it can never be undone and therefore never
ever needs repeating. If guilt is removed, if guilt
is removed, it never needs to be removed again. Never. So if we stay guilty in
this life, something is badly wrong, if we're a child of God. Look at chapter 10. of Hebrews,
just for a moment. This is what he's saying about
all those Old Testament sacrifices. In verse 1, he says, For the
law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image
of the things, with those sacrifices which they offered year by year,
continue to make the comers thereunto perfect. And what couldn't be
done? For then, if they had made somebody perfect, then would
they not have ceased to be offered? Of course. Why? Because the worshippers, once
purged, should have no more conscience of sins. No more conscience of sin. Look
at verse 18 of the same chapter. Now where remission of these
is, there is no more offering for sin. Now Paul makes a remarkable
statement in verses 8 and 9 of chapter 9. Look at it. This is
signifying that the way into the holiest of all was not yet
made manifest while at the first tabernacle was yet standing,
which was a figure for the time then present in which were offered
both gifts and sacrifices that could not make him that did the
service perfect as pertaining to conscience. They could not
do that. That's an astounding statement. That's an astounding
statement. Taking the entire matter of the
service of God by the law, and setting the law to represent
the old covenant, Paul says that the Holy Ghost teaches precisely,
specifically, by the numbers, that all those efforts in service
to God under the law were designed to fail. in removing guilt. They were
designed to fail. In the performance of these things,
the conscience was instead incited to guilt. Verse 3 of chapter
7 says, But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again
made of sins ever used. Guilt comes back. Guilt comes
back. All these rites, according to
the Holy Ghost, God the Spirit were carnal rites done in the
flesh and could not please God. Look back at chapter 9 and verse
10, which stood only in meats and drinks and divers washings,
and carnal what? Who ordained these things? Who appointed these things? God
did. And what does He say of them? Ordinances imposed on them till
Christ came. Till the time of Reformation.
Imposed on them. Now all these rights according
to the Holy Ghost were carnal. Now that's hardly an adjective
that men would apply to holiness. Or justness. Or righteousness. Yet God does. Men stand in pulpits and preach
the law as a means of righteousness, and what they produce in men
is carnal holiness, a holiness hatched in the conscience,
a performance of the knowledge of good and evil. And the Holy
Ghost simply does not teach that a man should go to the law for
righteousness ever, in any form. or for any reason, because to
do so is carnal, not spiritual, because it only
results in work regenerated and generated from death. When we were in the motions of
sin, Paul said, the law incited us, enticed us to bring forth
works unto death. works unto death. Operating in
the realm of conscience is not spiritual, and all effort and
endeavors that emanate from conscience produce dead works and cannot
ever be regarded as service to God. They can't. The impetus of conscience is
the broken law, and that is what the Holy Ghost teaches. Now is
there anything, is there such a thing as a good conscience? Is there? Can the accuser that we are born
with, that plagues our mind all the days of our lives, can that
accuser be silenced? It is clear that it cannot be
silenced by the deeds of the law. We just read that in verses
8 and 9. In fact, such deeds only increase
the decibel level. Religious service designed to
keep the law and render service to God is dead. It's dead. How
dead? Graveyard dead. Twice dead and plucked up by
the roots, dead. Neck crossed, dead. Stinking,
dead. Corrupting, dead. Dead. Guilt is employed by religion
as the incentive for religious service and is designed to soothe or
ease the conscience. The only problem with it is that
it never, ever works. And you who have been plucked
as a firebrand from legalistic, free will, works, religion, know
that by experience. We all tried to clean up our
act, and it was a failure. And yours will be too. come to church, but I want to
clean up my act first. Well, you must believe that salvation
is by works, then, that God only saves good people. What does
the Holy Ghost teach that will silence the conscience? I'd really
like to know, wouldn't you? This thing bugs me to death.
I'll be honest with you. Mine just worries me all the
time. That's something. I'd like to know or to shut it up. The Holy Spirit teaches that
a perfect sacrifice, a spiritual sacrifice, a sacrifice
that has nothing whatsoever to do with your religious service,
yet produces true and acceptable service to God, will quieten
your conscience. The conscience is only silenced,
listen very carefully, when no grounds exist upon which it may
accuse. No grounds. This means that there can be
no law to define, no sin to record, no guilt to
condemn. A perfect sacrifice shuts up
the conscience. Because the conscience cannot
say, you must do this, like sew fig leaves together, or hide
from God, or blame it on somebody else. Because you see, there's
nothing to cover. There's nothing to hide. There's
no one to blame. if you're not guilty. If you're
not guilty. That sacrifice is the sovereign,
successful, sweet, substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the
Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world. Look at
our text, verse 12. Neither by the blood of goats
and calves, but by His own blood He entered in once into the holy
place, having obtained." He got it. Eternal payment for us. Sin is a debt, isn't it? You're a child of God? It's paid. Hey! You say, well, don't I have
to do something? Tell your conscience to shut
up. The sacrifice has been made. It's been made. Look at verse
15. And for this cause He is the
mediator of the New Testament, that by means of death for the
redemption of the transgressions that were under the First Testament,
they which are called might receive the promise of an eternal inheritance. Inheritance. Look at verse 22.
And almost all things are by the law purged with blood, and
without shedding of blood there is no remission of sin. Verse
26, For then he must often have suffered since the foundation
of the world, but now, once in the end of the world, hath he
appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And you all are familiar with
chapter 10. Verses 12 through 18, I dare say probably if I
got it started, y'all could quote it out loud. You know, that high
priest, that blessed high priest, when he had finished the work
of salvation and perfected forever them that are sanctified, so
much so that God will not remember their sin anymore, he sat down
on the right hand of the majesty on high, having purged our sins,
And so there is no more need for sacrifice and no more need
for offering. The sin offering has been made.
And the conscience is purged and quietened and silenced and
placed under a judicial gag order when every basis for condemnation
is removed. Paul makes an allusion here to
the red heifer in verse 13. whose ashes symbolically cleansed
the defilement of the flesh. Now what defilement did those
ashes symbolically clean? The sin of touching a dead thing. What did Christ do for us? He
purged your conscience from dead works to serve the living God. Touching a dead thing. This alludes
to the dead works produced in serving God by conscience at
the risk of channeling MC Hammer, Can't touch this. Don't touch
this. Don't touch it. I beseech you by the mercies
of God, don't touch it. If the ashes of a heifer cleanse
the defilement of the flesh, the blood of Christ purges the
conscience from dead works. What does that mean? It means
you have no more conscience of sin. That's what it says. That's what it says in chapter
10 and verse 2, you have no more conscience of sin. It means that there is no basis
upon which the conscience can accuse you. Think of that. There is nothing in you or about
you before God that the conscience can accuse you of. And so it
has nothing to say. So it just shuts up. And instead
the Spirit says, there is therefore now no condemnation to them that are
in Christ Jesus. Who shall lay anything to the
charge of God's elect. Who is He that condemned? It is Christ that died that perfect
sacrifice. Yea, rather He's risen again
and is even at the right hand of the Father, living to make
intercession for us. We serve the living God, not
by conscience. but by faith. If your conscience
is bothering you, I can tell you what you're doing. You're
trying to serve God under the law. And conscience likes that. Because
it will tell you, you know, you didn't do it right. And then it will say, you better
do something about that. And then when you've done something
about that, it will say, it ain't enough. And you better run and
hide. It'll always say that. We don't serve the living God
to cover, to hide, or to assuage our guilt. We serve the living God because we're not guilty. Not guilty. Our works are not
dead but lively because they are spiritual and acceptable
to God by Jesus Christ. A lively priesthood offering
spiritual gifts unto God acceptable by the Lord Jesus Christ. You
see, looking to Christ makes the conscience mute. When I feel guilty it is because
I've breathed life into my conscience. And the result will be that I
will try to do something to cover my guilt or will try to hide
from God and maybe even blame you for it. I'll end up in despair
every time. When I look to Christ, would
to God I could do it all the time. Unbelief prevents me. My unbelief. But when I look
to Christ, when I see Him, Knowing that He has obtained eternal
redemption for me. Knowing that He has purged my
conscience from dead works to serve the living God. Knowing
that my sins are remitted. Knowing that there is no ground
upon which I can be accused or condemned. Knowing that I have
been perfected as pertaining to conscience. Knowing that God
will not remember my sins and iniquities. I then and only then
can serve the living God. Any other motivation or rationale
results in dead works. In dead works. When I see him, it is like a heavenly cordial
handed down from heaven. And I drink it. I imbibe. And I grow drunk. period of time, when I'm in that
worshipful, gospel stupor, I forget all my trouble. My conscience is quiet. Thank God for his unspeakable
gift. God bless you.