I want to read to you one verse
this evening.
I want to read you one verse this evening.
And I'll read it just after I share with you
what I'm going be speaking on.
And I'll share with you what I'm going to be speaking on
just after I pray.
So let's pray together.
Father, You told us
that without You we could do nothing,
and we believe it,
even though our flesh would rage with pride
and try to convince us we'll be okay.
By faith, we believe we can do nothing.
Lord, faith is the assurance of things hoped for
and we want to put our hope
in what You have promised.
Lord, You said that whoever believes in You
would do the work that You do,
and greater works than these would he do
because You had gone to the Father.
Would You allow me to do -
it's almost unspeakable, Lord -
greater works than You did?
Would you equip Your saints so that
we could all do greater works than You did
because You have gone to the Father;
You've ascended, and You've poured out
the powerful Holy Spirit.
Father, I want to pray that You would give us
a spirit of wisdom and of revelation
in the knowledge of You.
Lord, I want to pray that You would just
break chains this evening.
Lord, wherever there are those
who are in bondage, that You would free them,
and wherever there are Christians who are returning to a spirit of slavery,
that You would destroy it.
Lord, You know that this topic that we're talking about
is one that has plagued me, hurt me.
I just pray that I would be able to pass
a little bit of the help I've received on.
Lord, I pray that You'd give me clarity from Your Word.
Lord, that You'd give me prophecy
if there's something particular that needs to be pointed out.
And that You would just allow us
to know that Your Spirit was among us,
speaking to us by Your Word.
Now, Lord, let us preach and listen
with confidence in Christ who loves us
and gave Himself for us,
and promises to be with us always,
even to the end of the age.
We pray this in Jesus' name, Amen.
The topic I want to talk to you about tonight
is one that can cause you either great pain
or tremendous pleasure.
What I want to speak to us about
is a topic that can either be
pure and perfect -
something that can either be pure and perfect -
or, dirty and defiled.
It can be either good or bad.
Seared or soft.
I want to speak to you about the conscience.
And isn't the conscience where we live?
So much of our lives as Christians
are lived interacting with our consciences.
If the conscience is dirty,
there's no good day.
If the conscience is pure,
there is no bad day,
no matter what's happening.
If your conscience is clean,
communion with God is uninterrupted.
All hell can break loose against you
and you've got heaven in your soul.
If there's a hindrance between you and the Lord,
then everything can be going right,
and nothing's going right.
There's no joy in your soul.
And I want to speak to us about the conscience
from 1 Timothy 1:5
where we're told the goal
of all Christian teaching.
The goal of all Paul's teaching,
the goal of all Timothy's teaching,
the goal of every Sunday school you ever teach,
and the goal of every interaction you ever have with a friend
is summarized in this one verse.
1 Timothy 1:5.
"The aim of our charge..."
or as I believe the NASB puts it:
"The goal of our instruction."
"The aim of our charge is love
that issues from a pure heart
and a good conscience
and a sincere faith."
Everything that's ever taught
in the name of Christianity
ought to have a singular goal:
love.
If it's not helping people care
about other people more,
it's not Christian teaching.
If it's not warming your heart
to care more about God
and care more about the people He made,
it's not Christian teaching.
I don't care how orthodox it is,
if it doesn't result in love, it's bent,
and crooked, warped, and sinful,
and self-condemned.
The goal of all Christian teaching
is for you to care more about other people
for the glory of God.
The aim of our instruction is love.
And it issues, it flows out
of the inside.
And the inside of us is described
in three ways:
We're told that Christian teaching
that produces love -
that love actually ought to issue out of a pure heart -
a heart that's been born again,
a heart that's been cleansed,
a heart that has pure motives before God.
And a good conscience - we'll get to that.
And a sincere faith - not like the Pharisees.
They prayed in public, they acted holy,
they gave their tithes,
but it was all to have other people watch them.
It wasn't a sincere faith towards God.
It was a show faith towards man.
And then, the Apostle Paul singles out
the importance of a good conscience
in producing love.
And it should be clear almost immediately
just how very practical this is.
It is very practical to think about
how much we need a good conscience
if we're going to get biblical love.
So you think about how abortion
is justified in our day.
The slaughter of the innocents.
Sixty million Americans dead since 1973 -
legally.
And justified how?
In many cases, because it's loving.
Loving.
It would sacrifice the mother's dreams
to have a child at this point,
and we want to be loving
and let her become all that she was meant to be.
So, sacrifice the life of the child
so as not to sacrifice the mother's dreams.
Or, it's argued that abortion is loving
to the child.
Because of course, if you're born in poverty
or in a family that doesn't want you,
that couldn't be a life worth living.
So you see what happens
is that something is justified in the name of love,
but it's not from a biblical conscience.
Not from a good conscience at all.
Really, it's self-deceived.
One in every three women in America
by the time they're 40
has had an abortion.
So I realize I'm speaking to dear sisters
who have had abortions,
and men who have helped them get those abortions.
And I want to tell you, I'm going to share things with you
that will cleanse your conscience.
That will let you know freedom
and peace and joy.
It should just be immediately apparent
that this whole idea of a good conscience
is really important in the issue of love.
Why do so many churches not practice
church discipline?
Well, it's not loving.
Rebuking,
correcting,
excluding,
putting out.
All of that's inconceivable.
That can't be loving.
And so you've got bad definitions of love
moving people into action,
and you've got a bad idea of love.
You don't have love from a good conscience.
A good conscience says,
hey, Jesus decides what's loving.
And if you read Matthew 18,
it's all about love.
Go get that brother. Go win that brother.
Go get two or three to win that brother.
Go get the whole church to try to win that brother.
It's all about love
and winning the sinner in,
and when love divorces itself from the Bible,
you don't get love anymore.
And the Bible is interested in cultivating love
from a good conscience.
This is important to know when you're talking about new Christians.
I have a friend named Darren.
He went on to become a pastor,
but when he first got saved,
he was smoking pot,
he was smoking cigarettes, he was drinking alcohol,
he was drinking coffee,
and he got saved and he got so convicted,
and he quit the coffee and cigarettes right away.
But it took a little more conscience informing
before it started firing on all cylinders,
and he got convicted of what he needed to be convicted of
in order to repent
and continue to walk
in a matter worthy of the gospel.
And so we need to understand the conscience.
It's because of misunderstandings
about the conscience
that so many churches are so small.
Now listen, I believe that a lot of churches
are small because they're so faithful.
I believe that.
I believe that in the midst of a crooked
and perverse generation,
a lot of times the remnant is going to be small
and there aren't going to be a lot of people that join them.
I believe that faithfulness
can keep churches small.
Did anyone hear me say that?
Okay, I said that. Right?
And I believe that if your church
all becomes about what kind of bread you bake,
and what homeschooling curriculum you buy,
you're going to be small for the wrong reasons.
And you're going to pat yourself on the back
for your faithfulness,
while you keep people away from the kingdom of God.
And that's bad.
And so understanding issues of the conscience
is critical to living a life of love.
The goal of our instruction is love
from a pure heart,
a sincere faith,
and a good conscience.
Now, let's just ask:
what is the conscience?
We're looking at 1 Timothy 1:5.
It tells us that love is supposed to
come out of a good conscience.
What is a conscience?
And I think the best place to get a sense
of what a conscience is
is by watching a conscience in action
in Romans 2:14-16.
Romans 2:14-16.
Let us look at the conscience in action.
And as we see the conscience acting;
as we see what the conscience does,
we get a glimpse of what the conscience is.
The Apostle Paul, you might remember,
in the first three chapters of Romans
is proceeding like a lawyer
against the human race;
showing the universal guilt of the human race,
and how the whole human race
is under the guilt and under the power of sin.
And, as he goes and proceeds to do this,
he explains that Gentiles - that is non-Jews,
people who didn't deal with Moses;
didn't have the 10 Commandments;
didn't have the Bible;
the people Francis Schaeffer called,
"the man without the Bible."
He says these Gentiles, even though
they didn't have the 10 Commandments,
none the less, they had the law
written on their hearts.
And their consciences always spoke to them
about that law
that was written on their hearts.
Romans 2:14 says,
"For when Gentiles that do not have the law..."
They don't have the law of Moses.
They don't have the 10 Commandments
outside their courtyards.
"...By nature, do what the law requires,
they are a law to themselves,
even though they do not have the law,
they show that the work of the law
is written on their hearts,
while their consciences also bear witness
and their conflicting thoughts accuse
or even excuse them
on that day when according to my gospel
God judges the secrets of men
by Christ Jesus."
Every single person has the law
written on their heart.
And we're not talking about this
in the way that Hebrews 8 talks about
the law written on the heart.
When Hebrews 8 talks about
the Christian having the law written on their heart,
it means that the Christian longs to do the law.
Here, when we look at Romans 2,
it's just talking about that every person,
whether they're a Christian or not,
is aware of the law.
They know the difference between
right and wrong.
I had the privilege of witnessing
to two gay friends the other day,
and I said to them,
"Listen, isn't it amazing that you're living
in this time and this culture
where I know there's been persecution
and hatred against homosexuals,
but really, at the end of the day,
this is about as easy a time as you can imagine
to be gay, and you both feel guilty now."
And they're like, "Yeah."
Because they have the law written on their hearts.
Because their conscience has not been
completely silenced.
And what the Bible tells us
is that the law is written on the heart,
so we have this knowledge of right and wrong,
we have this knowledge of what's good and bad,
and the conscience is a witness
that's always telling us
whether we're doing the good
or doing the bad.
It's bearing witness.
It's like having, as one person put it,
a prosecuting attorney in your heart
and a defense attorney in your heart
at the same time.
So the attorney at one point is saying,
"You are guilty."
And then at the next point, it's saying,
"You are innocent."
That was good. That was bad.
There's this constant self-evaluation
going on within the heart
being done by the conscience
as it compares your behaviors,
your attitudes, and your actions
to God's law.
The conscience bears witness.
It's like an alarm that goes off
when you're about to do the wrong thing.
It's like a knife that stabs your heart
when you do the wrong thing.
And it's constantly reflecting you to you.
And it's a bit wrong to say it's part of you,
but there's also a sense, isn't there,
where it's independent of you.
I can close my eyes. They're closed.
I can't see you now.
I've not figured out how to shut my conscience off.
Sadly, there is a way. I'll show you.
But it's not easy to silence the conscience.
It's there when you go to bed.
I believe the reason that so many people stay so busy,
so distracted, so constantly needing noise in their ears
and visuals in front of their eyes
is in many ways, just to keep
their conscience at bay.
They cannot bear the sound of silence
because as soon as you meet silence,
there's a sound.
And it's the sound of your conscience.
So, the conscience is a witness
given by God that reflects
whether we're either disobeying God's law
or obeying it.
It's either excusing us or accusing us
all the time.
And there's debate about how v. 16
fits into Romans 2,
but it does seem that the final judgment
is not far off from the eyesight of the conscience.
"On that day, when according to my gospel
God judges the secrets of men
by Christ Jesus."
Your conscience right now is secret.
I can't see your conscience.
I don't know who in front of me
is tormented with guilt,
and who is genuinely joyful in the Lord.
I don't know.
And you can't see mine.
Our consciences have a secret operation.
But there will come a day
when those secrets are all brought up
before the Lord.
And where the Lord will assess
whether we've done right or wrong
on the judgment day.
And I'm going to tell you,
I believe the conscience knows
we've done wrong.
Look at Romans 1:32.
Romans 1:32.
He's speaking about the Gentiles.
He's just listed off this whole list of sins.
Homosexuality, lesbianism,
gossip, slander,
disobedience to parents.
He's listed off all these things
that Kevin pointed out so well.
We ought to feel compassionate about
when we see them in other people.
And he tells us how the Gentiles
feel about all these sins they commit.
They tell you it doesn't bother them.
They tell you it's no big deal.
They tell you they stopped feeling guilty about that years ago.
Romans 1:32.
"Though they know God's righteous decree
that those who practice such things
deserve to die,
they not only do them,
but give approval to those who practice them."
People know that God has decreed
the death sentence against their sin.
They know that.
Deeply.
Their consciences remind them
that they deserve to die
because of their sin.
And they gather around them people
who go, "that's okay. It's no big deal."
"Oh, don't get into that old antiquated morality."
"That's all false. That's all lies."
"You need to understand that we're free of all that stuff now."
And they surround themselves with voices
that say it's all okay.
But when they put their head on the pillow,
or have a moment of silence,
it's there.
I've done wrong.
And I deserve to die.
And I wonder how many of you here
know you've done wrong
and you deserve to die,
and tonight will be the time you taste freedom
for the first time.
Wouldn't that be great?
Come out of the shadows?
Come out of the secrets?
And have your conscience cleansed?
I used to teach a Bible study in prison,
and there were a number of men in the Bible study
who had killed their wives.
One of them denied it for years and years
and years and years and years.
And when he finally admitted that he'd killed his wife,
they said he changed color.
It was just life giving
to come clean;
to confess.
So, here is a definition.
I've been helped out with this.
The conscience is that aspect
because we're made in the image of God -
the conscience is that aspect of us
that tells us what's right
and what's wrong.
The conscience is that aspect of us
because we're made in the image of God
that witnesses to us
about what is right and what is wrong.
We're made in the image of God,
and God is the kind of God who says,
that's good; that's good; that's good.
Man alone? Not good.
Man with a wife? Very good.
He is the God who says what's good,
not good, and very good.
We're made in His image.
And so we have a conscience that bears witness
to good, evil, not good, very good.
We're made in the image of God
and so like God, we cannot help
but to witness to the reality of morality.
That's what the conscience is.
Everyone has one.
Only you experience yours.
It witnesses to what's going on in your heart
regarding God's law -
whether you're obeying it and you should be excused,
or you're disobeying it and should be accused.
And ultimately, all of our secret thoughts
will be brought up to the judgment of God
on the last day.
This is my second point if you're keeping notes.
If you're keeping notes, I'm sorry.
I'm just the worst preacher for that.
But, here's the second point.
We've looked at what the conscience is,
and now we want to look at the fact
that the conscience has different states.
The conscience can be in different states.
And I don't mean the conscience can be
in Mississippi and Alabama.
I mean that it can be in different places before God.
It can be in different states.
This is implied in the verse.
We wouldn't really need to go further than 1 Timothy 1:5.
We will go further than 1 Timothy 1:5,
but it's implied right there in 1 Timothy 1:5.
The goal of our instruction is love
from a good conscience.
So one of the states
that a conscience can be in
is it can be good.
You can have a good conscience.
The implication of the verse is
that when you start your Christian life,
the conscience isn't as good as it should be
and so you need Christian teaching
to learn how to walk with a good conscience.
The conscience can be in different states.
And it's going to benefit us, I think,
this evening.
It's going to benefit us to think through
some of the states
the conscience can be in.
This isn't exhaustive,
but I hope it's helpful.
The first is the conscience can be weak.
The conscience can be weak.
Look at 1 Corinthians 8.
1 Corinthians 8, if you will.
And we'll read verses 7-12.
We'll put our fingers on v. 10.
1 Corinthians 8:7-12.
The situation is that some of the Corinthians
were eating meat sacrificed to idols.
And they'd gotten saved;
they's realized that Zeus and Hermes
and all these idols, they were nothing.
They didn't even exist.
And so the fact that in Corinth,
all the meat in the meat market
was sacrificed to idols didn't bother them
because all the idols didn't exist.
But Paul says in v. 7,
not all possess this knowledge.
Not every Christian's worked it out.
Even though there's only one God,
and Zeus and Hermes don't exist,
not every Christian has fully appreciated that,
fully understood that,
fully gotten that.
They're worshiping God and God alone,
but man, Zeus and Hermes are real,
and I don't want anything to do with them.
And it says there,
"not all possess this knowledge..."
this knowledge that there is only one God,
and there are no idols,
"...but some through former association with idols
eat food as really offered to an idol
and their conscience being weak
is defiled.
Food will not commend us to God,
we are no worse off if we do not eat,
and no better off if we do,
but take care that this right of yours
does not somehow become a stumbling block
to the weak.
For if anyone sees you who have knowledge
eating in an idol's temple,
will he not be encouraged
if his conscience is weak
to eat food offered to idols
and so by your knowledge, this weak person
is destroyed,
the brother for whom Christ died,
thus sinning against your brother
and wounding their conscience when it is weak,
you sin against Christ.
Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble,
I will never eat meat,
lest I make my brother stumble."
The idea here is that
some of these Christians,
they couldn't get over the connection
between the meat and the idols.
They couldn't get over it.
They couldn't get it out of their mind.
It was like when I got saved.
I had been to every nasty punk show
before I got saved,
and when I got to Bible college
and found all these Christians
listening to Christianized punk music,
I couldn't understand how it could be good.
It couldn't possibly be decent,
because it had too many associations
with the evil I had come out of
for me to even conceive of it possibly being good.
And these Christians in Corinth
had so many memories of the pagan temples
and so many memories of the wickedness
that happened there,
that the idea of eating meat
that was sacrificed to those gods,
they just couldn't handle that.
They couldn't tolerate that.
And so their consciences were weak.
They were weak because they were not
walking in the fullness of what God has revealed.
And what God has revealed
is that Zeus and Hermes don't exist.
Mohammad and Allah don't exist.
Vishnu doesn't exist.
All the gods, all the false gods of this world,
don't even exist,
so you can sacrifice food all you want to them,
they don't exist!
But these believers had not been
fully able to appreciate
all of God's truth.
Now, we're going to get into this later,
but notice Paul's approach is not:
"What's wrong with you not appreciating
all of God's revealed truth?"
His answer is:
care for the weak brother.
Don't offend him.
He doesn't understand everything in the Bible,
but he understands the things that save him.
Don't hurt him.
His conscience is weak.
And there are people in our day
who think that any touching of alcohol
is a sin even though Jesus made wine.
And your conscience is weak.
There are people who think
one day is holier than all the others,
and Paul says their consciences are weak.
Now, that's kind of hard, right?
Because when your conscience is weak,
you feel like it's pretty strong.
Right?
I've got a few of those issues myself.
I've got a pretty good unbiblical case
for what I believe.
Nonetheless, Paul identifies
certain consciences that have not
walked into the fullness of God's revelation.
He identifies them as weak.
You're going to have a weak conscience.
And conversely, you can have a strong conscience.
A strong conscience is one that fully walks in
what God has revealed to be okay.
A conscience can also be seared.
1 Timothy 4:1 please.
A conscience can also be seared.
1 Timothy 4:1
Remember we're now in the same book
that our first passage comes from.
Paul says, "Now the Spirit expressly says
that in later times, some will
depart from the faith by devoting themselves
to deceitful spirits
and the teachings of demons
through the insincerity of liars
whose consciences are seared,
who forbid marriage,
and require abstinence from food
that God created to be received
with thanksgiving by those who believe
and know the truth.
For everything created by God is good
and nothing is to be rejected
if it is received with thanksgiving,
for it is made holy by the Word of God and prayer."
Now some of you could come up to me
after the service,
and if my experience is true,
some of you will,
and you've got burns.
Places where your skin has been seared.
And of course, you know,
if you put out a match with your two fingers,
it's no big deal,
but if you fall onto the top of the stove
or you wind up in a fire,
you wind up with skin where the nerve damage
is terrible, where you can no longer feel
what's going on on the skin.
And so what ought to be sensitive
and sensitive to touch,
you actually can't feel because it's seared.
And the Bible says that the conscience
can become like that.
You know, one time, you say
your first cuss word.
Then years later, you're swearing like a sailor
and you don't even notice.
A person looks at their first pornographic image,
and it's seared into their minds.
It's blazed in there.
And then, ten years later,
they can't even remember how much
garbage they've seen.
The first time, it just bothered them,
it tormented them.
Ten years later, they didn't even realize
it was wrong.
That's a seared conscience.
It's not sensitive
the way it ought to be.
And we tend to think about that
with drugs and alcohol.
If you get into drugs and alcohol,
you'll sear your conscience,
and you really will.
But Paul's concern is actually with legalism.
There's some people that say marriage is bad,
and I'm here to tell you they're demonic.
Isn't that what the verse says?
"By devoting themselves to deceitful spirits
and the teaching of demons."
Some people forbid marriage.
Some people make new rules and regulations
where you've got to be just about like Jesus
before you're allowed to marry anybody.
They make it almost impossible
for anyone to get married.
You can court my daughter once you're perfect.
That sounds godly.
Sounds a lot like 1 Corinthians 7.
If you're struggling, let them get married.
Some people don't realize
that tacos are a gift from God.
Amen?
If you don't agree,
well, go back to that demonic verse.
And we need to watch those things
because it can feel very holy
not to do certain things.
When you get a zeal for the Lord,
it's very easy for Satan to hijack that
with a do not taste, do not handle,
do not touch mentality.
I used to do those things, but now I don't.
Well, if what you mean is you used to be
an adulterer, but now you're not?
Good.
But if you mean you used to enjoy food,
but now you don't?
Bad.
Your conscience is being seared.
Another aspect or state of the conscience
can be in is guilty,
or in the words of Hebrews in the ESV,
"evil."
Hebrews 10:22.
Here the writer of Hebrews writes
in Hebrews 10:22,
"Let us draw near..."
meaning, draw near to God.
"...With a true heart
in full assurance of faith,
with our hearts sprinkled clean
from an evil conscience..."
Or as some translations put it:
"from a guilty conscience,
and our bodies washed with pure water."
Isn't this interesting?
When we draw near to God,
the conscience comes up, doesn't it?
Because as soon as you go to draw near to God,
ooh, that thing you said to your wife pops up.
The fact that you weren't just
biblically correcting your children,
but you were screaming comes up.
Years ago, I was preaching,
and I hadn't planned on mentioned it,
I just mentioned,
maybe some of you have cheated on your taxes,
and immediately, a lady comes up to me
after the service and said,
"I've never cheated on my taxes before.
I cheated on them this year."
It's amazing how things can just surface
when we go to approach God.
And if we're going to approach God
and really enjoy it and actually
commune with God,
the guilt or the evil
that's on our consciences
needs to be cleansed.
It needs to be washed away.
Because otherwise, you know
you're approaching a holy God
as a dirty sinner.
And that's simply not possible,
because His eyes are too pure
to behold what's sinful.
So there's a guilty or evil conscience.
And then, let's remember this one really quickly.
There is such a thing as a purified conscience.
A cleansed conscience.
Hebrews 9:11-14.
We'll look at v. 14.
Hebrews 9, "How much more
will the blood of Christ,
who through the eternal Spirit
offered Himself without blemish to God,
purify your conscience
from dead works...
(works that call out for your death)
to serve the living God."
The apostle here is talking to us
about how in the Old Testament,
worship of God and the approach to God
was when you approached His temple
and approached His tabernacle,
and this was done by sacrificing animals
year after year after year.
And we're told that the sacrificing of animals
never took away the knowledge of sin.
But how much more the blood of Christ,
who was the Sheep without a blemish;
who wasn't just one lamb,
but was the Lamb of God.
Behold, the Lamb of God,
who takes away the sins of the world.
It says here, "How much more will the blood of Christ,
who through the eternal Spirit
offered Himself without blemish to God,
purify your conscience from dead works
to serve the living God."
Listen to me.
Your conscience screams out for your death.
Your conscience gnaws away at you
for your death.
Your conscience screams
like the blood of guilt and says,
"you deserve to die for that thing you did
and for those things you did
and for those attitudes you harbor.
You deserve to die."
And then Christ comes shedding His own blood
and says, "I died."
Your conscience screams for the wrath of God
to be poured out on you.
And Christ stands before you
and takes the wrath of God;
propitiating the wrath of God;
taking all the wrath of God on Himself.
The way to deal with the conscience
is not to say, "Oh, everybody does it."
"Oh, it's not that bad."
"Oh, I'll forget about it eventually."
Beloved, some of you will find
that the conscience comes to haunt you
in your last minute
before you die.
Those secrets will not go away.
They must be dealt with by the blood of Christ.
You feel dirty? He is clean.
You feel defiled? He is pure.
You feel like your conscience rages
and calls out for the wrath of God?
He has satisfied the wrath of God
by taking upon Himself in His body
on the tree.
Beloved, you can be clean.
I don't care if you killed your children,
or if you drove your girlfriend to the abortion clinic,
or if you've shot someone
that you've never told anyone about,
or if there's a harem in your mind
from all the pornography you've looked at,
or if you told a lie to your mother or your father,
or you stole from your children,
or you stole from your parents,
or you stole from your boss -
whatever it is, if you will lay it before Jesus,
He will cleanse it.
And He will take away
even the consciousness of guilt.
He will cleanse your conscience.
A cleansed conscience is not a conscience
that managed to forget guilt.
It's a conscience that has experienced
guilt dealt with by the price being fully paid
at the cross.
Oh, in the sea of God's forgetfulness.
That's good enough for me.
Praise God, my sins are gone!
And then a conscience - 1 Timothy 1:5 -
can be good.
What's a good conscience?
A good conscience is a conscience
that is purified
and is learning God's path.
The good conscience is a conscience
that is purified
and is learning God's path.
Think about the rest of the book of 1 Timothy.
It unfolds how we ought to behave
as people of the church.
It teaches us how a person ought to behave
when they are part of the household of God.
And they way they ought to behave
is explained and it's conscience-liberating
to read the Word of God
to realize what God expects of you.
There are some pastors who feel terribly guilty
because they're caring for their wives,
caring for their children;
they feel like they should be out every night.
They need to go, go, go, go, go
because people are dying and going to hell.
And then the Bible comes along to their conscience
and says no, you need to manage your own household well.
Because if you can't manage your own household well,
how will you manage God's church?
And there's moms who think,
I should be counseling; I should be evangelizing.
but instead I'm just caring for these kids and caring for this husband.
Kids and husband. Kids and husband.
All the time. All the time. All the time.
And then 1 Timothy comes along
in 1 Timothy 2 and says,
you'll be saved through childbearing.
"...If you continue in faith and love
and holiness with self-control."
That doesn't mean you have a baby, you go to heaven.
It means the ordinary context
in which a woman who's married
will work out her salvation with fear and trembling
will be in the task of mothering.
Are you preoccupied with mothering?
Well, if you're a mother, praise God!
Let the truth of God's Word
inform your conscience
so that it's good.
You know how many places it says in the Bible
that if you have a pile of laundry in the basement,
you're in sin?
Nowhere.
And if you let it bind your conscience,
it will ruin you.
We're laughing, but there are
depressed, demoralized, discouraged women
who are binding their consciences
with the things the Word of God
says nothing about.
You've got a friend,
and they're selling vitamins,
and if you buy these vitamins,
you'll be broke but your kids will live forever.
What kind of a mother am I
buying Happy Meals?
Well, you're a good mother.
There's good toys in the Happy Meals.
We don't dare bind ourselves.
It's no small issue.
Calvin said people think that we reformers
are making a big deal
by speaking about holy days and vestments
and saying that they have no place in the church.
He said we are right on target
because as soon as the conscience
binds itself with things that are
beyond the Word of God,
it produces no end of misery.
He says that first, a person will say
I can't drink wine.
And then, they'll think,
I can't drink sparkling water.
And then they won't be able to find a water that's clean enough.
That's what your conscience will do
if it's not gripped by the Word of God
and the Word of God alone.
I remember as a young pastor,
I was pastoring all these young people.
I'm still pastoring all these young people.
And I was really young.
I'm still pretty young, but I was even younger.
And they were even younger.
So we were just the blind leading the blind.
And I thought I need to preach on marriage and the family,
and I need to give them
all kinds of instructions on how dad's need to
take their kids deer hunting
to make them real men and eat steak with them.
And moms need to do this and that.
I need to give them all these
incredible, great family values
to protect them from the ungodliness of the world.
And then you read your Bible, and?
None of it's there!
Paul's writing to pagans
converted to Christianity in Colossians.
And he's going to teach them
how to do marriage.
Husbands, love your wives. Next verse.
What about the date night?
What about the full financial plan?
What about putting a maximum security prison
around your daughter until she's 25?
Who forgot that part?
Listen to me.
Believing in the sufficiency of Scripture -
that's the doctrine that Scripture is enough
to lead us into all godliness -
believing in the sufficiency of Scripture
not only means that you
say all that Scripture says,
but that you don't say
what the Scripture doesn't say.
Because if God shuts His mouth,
He knows what He's doing.
And what happens when you pare down
godliness to those basic things,
is you get a gospel that can
take the planet by storm,
instead of getting caught up
in your cultural baggage.
You wind up with a gospel
that can go to every single part of the planet
not wrapped in American clothes
or Victorian English clothes,
but wrapped in the clothes of Christ,
bringing people to the essence of godliness.
Love your wife. How do you do it?
Well, we do a date night.
Oh yeah? We don't. But I love her too.
Which one of us is godlier?
That's not the point.
A good conscience is one
that is led by the Word of God alone!
And it's not a little holier to add to it.
It's demonic.
And it wrecks people souls,
and it eats their consciences up,
and it steals their joy from loving
the pure sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ.
It's not a joke.
We've got people who are so serious
about not being worldly
in the drugs and alcohol way,
but who love to flirt with worldliness
in the legalism way.
Deadly!
Now, what I want to do with the time
we have remaining -
and I'm planning to have quite a bit of time remaining,
just in case you're curious -
what I want to do in the time remaining
is I want to discuss the relationship
(incomplete thought) -
three different relationships your conscience is in.
The relationship between your conscience and the devil.
The relationship between your conscience and the world.
And then your relationship
between the conscience and the church.
First, your conscience and the devil.
You can turn to Colossians 2.
Relationship between your conscience
and the devil.
It all sounds so easy when I say it, right?
A good conscience is one that's purified
and follows God's path.
Go.
A good conscience is one that's purified
and follows God's path,
but we have an enemy who's called
the accuser of the brethren.
And he loves to accuse our consciences.
He likes to throw fiery darts at them.
He likes to hail us with accusations.
He likes to assault us
by reminding us of the condemnation of God's law,
and then he'll even condemn us
with laws that go beyond God's law.
And you need to know how to deal with the devil.
Because you can lay hold of Christ,
and you can try to follow God's path,
and the devil will be there pelting you
with accusations.
You didn't do that one perfectly enough.
Have you ever thought about it -
the devil doesn't have a conscience
holding him back.
He doesn't have a heart holding him back.
Even the wickedest human being
has some semblance of good left in them.
There is no good in the devil.
He is all evil.
And he wants us all dead and destroyed.
He will accuse you until your joy is gone.
And if he can, he'll have you leave Jesus.
And you need to know what to do
when he comes to you with accusations.
And I would suggest one thing to do
is to remember Colossians 2:13-15.
Paul talking to Christians says,
"You were dead in your trespasses and sins
in the uncircumcision of your flesh."
You were dead - walking in the way of sin,
following the way of the devil, Ephesians 2 says.
Unresponsive to God.
"And God made you alive together with Him..."
Together with Christ.
"...Having forgiven all of our trespasses
by cancelling the record of debt
that stood against us
with its legal demands.
This He set aside,
nailing it to the cross."
So the law says to you,
"you owe God perfect obedience
and if you're not perfectly obedient,
you deserve to die.
You owe God your life.
You deserve to die."
But Christ came and died for believers.
He came and took the curse of the law,
says Galatians 3, on Himself,
so that the death penalty that you and I deserve
was poured out on Christ,
so that that death penalty is no longer there to be had
because it's been, as our brother said yesterday,
paid in full.
Now what the devil will do
is he will put a gun to your head,
and he will say, "you are guilty
and you will be condemned.
You are guilty and you will be condemned.
You have not loved God with all your heart,
with all your soul,
and with all your mind,
and you have not loved your neighbor as yourself,
and you are going to be condemned."
And when the devil does that
with his gun to your head, you say,
"There's no bullets in the gun, devil."
"This He set aside, nailing it to the cross.
He disarmed (that is, God disarmed)
the rulers and authorities
(that's the satanic powers -
the principalities and the powers of this world) -
He disarmed the rulers and authorities
and put them to an open shame
by triumphing over them in Him."
The devil comes and tells you
you're condemned;
your sins can't be forgiven,
you've got that one sin;
or your sanctification hasn't been fast enough,
and he puts you under God's law,
and he tells you you're condemned,
and he will roar and he will rage
and he will do everything to convince you
that he has all the power to condemn you,
and you need to remind him,
he is disarmed.
Because what's he threatening you with?
The condemnation of the law?
Well, if Jesus did anything,
He took the condemnation of the law away.
"God made Jesus who knew no sin
to be sin for us, that we might become
the righteousness of God in Him."
"There's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."
And the devil has only empty threats.
You remember that when he comes to rage at you.
You hold on to that, and he will flee.
The other thing you need to remember
when you're dealing with the devil
is that he always wants you in front of the law,
not in front of the Father.
The devil always wants you in front of the law,
not in front of the Father.
The law says you've got to do everything
I've commanded, or you're dead.
The Father says I had everything done
for me in Christ, and you're Mine.
The law accepts only perfect obedience
or you're dead.
The Father has received perfect obedience
through Christ and now delights
in your growing imperfect obedience.
The law expects perfection
and executes perfect righteousness.
The gospel says perfect righteousness
has been satisfied
and now delights to see
the flower of the new birth
growing in your soul.
You say, where's that in the Bible?
Well, there's one example in John 17:6.
John 17:6.
Here's Jesus praying for Peter,
and James, and John,
and all those disciples who would
fight about who was the greatest.
And who would stumble
in their discipleship.
And Jesus prays in John 17:6.
Now remember, He's praying to God.
He's not putting on a show for man.
He's praying to God.
He says, "I have manifested Your name
to the people whom You gave Me out of the world."
I showed Your people You.
I have manifested Your name -
Your character -
to the people You gave Me out of the world.
"Yours they were,
and You gave them to Me,
and they have kept Your Word."
Do you know who He's talking about?
Have you read the Gospels?
Peter, James, John...
the other ones.
"I want to be on His right hand."
"Go tell mom to argue that I should be
on His right hand."
These guys.
"They have kept Your Word."
Now Jesus isn't saying they were perfect.
But He's saying that the direction of their life was pleasing.
And He was assessing their life
like a father assesses his own child.
Have you ever seen a 5 year old clean their room?
It's fairly pathetic.
But if you walk into that room
and see that the covers were basically
moved in the direction,
and the toys weren't all just hidden under the bed,
if you're a halfway decent father,
you celebrate right then and there.
You did what I said.
And the Lord loves to delight
in the imperfect obedience of His children.
Oh, He will discipline His children when they're disobedient,
but there's only imperfect obedience,
and He delights in it.
And you need to know
that the devil will never let you see that.
But Christ will keep that before your eyes.
Without that, you'll have no freedom in your conscience.
Second one, real quick.
Your conscience's relationship to the world.
2 Corinthians 4:1.
Our brother gave such a good definition
of natural Christianity;
being a normal person;
hanging out with your unbelieving friends
and relatives in a normal way.
Kevin did such a great job of that.
What's your job once you're washing the dishes with them?
Maybe even occasionally singing the secular song
that's in the background while you're doing it?
But not if it's a bad one.
What's your job then?
2 Corinthians 4:1.
"Thereby having this ministry by the mercy of God
we do not lose heart.
But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways.
We refuse to practice cunning
or to tamper with God's Word..."
We're not slick and fancy in our ministry.
"But by the open statement of the truth,
we would commend ourselves
to everyone's conscience in the sight of God."
That's all we're called to do.
Openly state the truth
and place it on people's consciences.
But when I say that we're sinners,
they don't listen.
When I say Christ died for sins,
they don't listen.
No, they just haven't repented and believed yet.
They heard you.
That seed's been sown.
It's laying on the conscience.
It can do its work when the head
goes on the pillow.
And God will redeem all of His own
who hear the Gospel.
You lay it on their conscience
in gentleness and love.
If they hate you or love you,
you simply make an open statement of the truth
and lay it on men's consciences
in the sight of God.
You don't need to be fancy.
You don't need to get a blimp and get the gospel up in the air.
You don't need to do anything like that.
You just need to talk to people honestly
about sin and salvation,
laying it on their consciences
and God will do His work.
You know, oftentimes people think,
well, I can't share the gospel.
These people don't even believe in God. They don't understand the Bible.
They don't really believe any of the same things I do about right and wrong.
We have missionaries now in our day
who don't think they can just go to other countries and share the gospel.
They have to do like six months
of ethnographic research
before they can even share the gospel.
Listen, there isn't a place on the planet
where people don't have consciences.
It's part of the image of God.
You have an ally in evangelism
everywhere you go.
And the minute the Spirit wants to
make that conscience alive and awake,
He will do it.
You just ask Him that you would speak
the open statement of the truth
and commend yourself to every man's conscience
in the sight of God.
What a liberating look at evangelism!
Lastly, and by lastly, I don't mean briefly.
So turn to Romans 14.
Romans 14.
This issue of the conscience is so critical
in our relationships in the local church.
All of the members of local churches
have consciences.
And when they're members of churches like ours,
they have enlightened consciences.
And when they're members of churches like ours,
they have convictional consciences
that believe things strongly.
And that's good.
But you've got to know how to handle it.
You've got to know how to handle it.
It's good to have 50 people
or 100 people or 1,000 people
who are fully convinced in their own mind
that they are doing the will of God
in every detail of their lives.
That's good.
I'm not saying anything to lessen that.
We need more of that, not less of it.
But you need to know how to handle it.
Or it will destroy the unity
and the love of the church,
and if you destroy the unity
and the love of the church,
you destroy the witness of the church.
Let me read to you Romans 14:1.
We'll bring out a few things, and then we'll be done.
"As for the one who is weak in faith..."
That's another way of saying has a weak conscience.
"As for the one who is weak in faith,
welcome him, but not to quarrel
over opinions."
My brother used to have a "Whole Foods" bumper sticker.
You know Whole Foods grocery stores?
Everything in there is awesome.
We call it "Whole Paycheck" at our church.
And that bumper sticker said,
"Friends don't let friends eat junk."
And I cleared it with him before I preached on this.
But I said according to Romans 14:1,
sometimes friends do let friends eat junk.
"As for the one who is weak in faith,
welcome him, but not to quarrel
over opinions."
Secondary, tertiary matters
that are so far from the center of the gospel.
Do you use nutberries in your bread?
I had a guy show up on my doorstep one time -
one of our members -
and he said to me,
"You know, Ryan, I've just been learning so much
about the biblical diet lately."
And I just said, "No, you haven't."
"As for the one who is weak in faith,
welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions.
One person believes he can eat anything,
while the weak person eats only vegetables."
No, I don't mean to harp on this,
but do notice that the weak person
is the more restrictive person.
It's humbling.
"Let not the one who eats
despise the one who abstains.
And let not the one who abstains
pass judgment on the one who eats.
For God has welcomed him.
Who are you to pass judgment
on the servant of another?
It is before his own master
that he stands or falls.
And he will be upheld,
for the Lord is able to make him stand."
Even if he listens to Christian hip-hop, he can stand?
Yes, even him.
He can be made to stand.
What if he only listens to the Gaithers?
Yes, he can stand too.
God can keep him standing.
I know it's hard to believe.
You get these differences in the church, right?
One guy's like, "I would never get a tattoo."
Another guy's like, "Revelation 7's right here."
You're like, how is this guy going to stand?
His Master is going to make him stand.
That's how it's going to happen.
His Master has a personal interest in him.
And He's going to make him stand.
"He will be upheld, for the Lord is able
to make him stand.
One person esteems on day as better than another,
while another esteems all days alike.
Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind."
We're not diminishing convictional Christianity.
We're learning how to deal with it.
If you will never get a tattoo,
you should be fully convinced in your own mind.
If you're going to get a tattoo,
you better not get one because everyone else got one.
You should be fully convinced in your own mind
or you ought not to touch that thing.
"The one who observes the day,
observes it in honor of the Lord.
The ones who eats, eats in honor of the Lord
since he gives thanks to God,
while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord
and gives thanks to God.
For none of us lives to himself,
and none of us dies to himself.
For if we live, we live to the Lord,
and if we die, we die to the Lord.
So whether or whether we die,
we are the Lord's.
For to this end, Christ died and lived again,
that He might be Lord both of the dead
and the living."
Three principles and I think we're done.
Your primary responsibility
towards people who differ with you
on secondary matters
is to have them over for dinner
and make it a welcoming, warm experience.
"As for the one who is weak in faith,
welcome him, but not to quarrel
over opinions."
If all the people who ever get into your house
homeschool just like you homeschool,
you're doing something wrong.
If you only let your kids play with
the other public school kids,
you're doing something wrong.
If two Christians can't differ on schooling methods,
we've got a problem.
If you only invite people who eat your special diet,
you've got a problem.
And maybe you ought to be willing,
if it's not a convictional issue,
to not eat your diet,
to be able to get over and show
hospitality in someone's home.
And when you get together,
the point isn't:
here's the roast beef.
There are some issues I've been wanting to talk to you about
in the Lord, brother.
Just let it go.
Now, that doesn't mean there can't be
those conversations among the body,
but let there first be
a warm environment of hospitality and love
where it's abundantly clear that I view you
as a fellow servant of Christ.
Now, I'm going to talk to people
who watch movies I wouldn't watch,
and I'm going to have a conversation with them.
Sure I am.
If I'm worried about something,
I'm going to talk to someone about it.
But first, first is not
the quarreling over opinions.
First is the warm relationship
of welcome and love.
Second, you need to realize
that the weak and the strong
both have unique temptations.
The weak and the strong both
have their unique set of temptations.
You notice that?
"One person believes he may eat anything,
while the weak person eats only vegetables.
Let not the one who eats despise
the one who abstains.
Let not the one who abstains
pass judgment on the one who eats."
Despising and judgment.
Okay, strong people are tempted to despise.
Weak people are tempted to judge.
And this was so clear years ago
when everything on the blogs was about
who could drink beer and who couldn't.
The people who could drink beer
despised - "how do you even live
without tasting a craft beer?"
"How do you even be a Christian?"
"How do you enjoy life to the full,
you fundamentalist fools?"
And then on the other side,
nothing but judgment.
Worldly.
Backslidden.
Heathen.
Both are displeasing sins to Jesus.
Both of them.
They are both wrong.
It's wrong to judge someone
in a way that condemns them,
when they're different than you on a secondary matter.
And it's wrong to despise someone
who doesn't have the same freedom as you.
It's wrong because the goal of our instruction
is love.
Love. It's always love.
We're always after love.
But Ryan, how do I love
when I feel the person's compromising?
I mean, I'm really, I'm trying to be faithful,
and I really believe that I should only
listen to Christian music.
I believe it.
I'm not trying to be a legalist.
I love Jesus.
And that's just where I'm at.
And that's where a lot of you are at,
and praise God for you,
for just trying to live before the Lord in everything.
And others of you are like,
Ryan, I really believe I have the liberty
to do this, and I'm not trying to sin.
I'm not trying to get away with anything.
I want to be holy in everything I do.
Praise God for you.
How do those people get along
without feeling like they're compromising?
Because that's what you're afraid of right?
You're afraid if you welcome this person in,
you're going to compromise your walk with Jesus.
How do you do it?
You learn to recognize something deeper
than the superficial stuff.
You learn to recognize a heart
that wants to honor the Lord,
even though they're not honoring the Lord
exactly the way you would.
You see that in the text?
It says there,
"Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another?"
We're in v. 4.
"It is because of his own master that he stands or falls,
and he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand.
One person esteems one day as better than another,
while another esteems all days alike.
Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.
The one who observes the day (listen here)
observes it in honor of the Lord.
The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord
since he gives thanks to God,
while the one who abstains,
abstains in honor of the Lord,
and gives thanks to God."
When we put all the focus
on these secondary matters,
all we notice is:
you watch movies I wouldn't watch.
And we miss a heart to honor the Lord.
Come on, are there too many hearts
in the world that want to honor the Lord
that you want to miss even one of them?
What we want to learn is how to detect
a heart that wants to honor the Lord
and is thanking the Lord.
Now, you may not be able to do what they do.
And don't do what they do,
if you're not convinced in your own mind.
But notice a heart that wants to honor
the Lord, and when you notice that,
you have the most important bond in the world.
And God's going to uphold people
who try to honor Him.
Even if they don't get it exactly right in every detail.
Let me give you an example of this.
In the church I pastor,
if I knew a guy was looking at pornography,
was messing around sexually,
and was watching movies -
they weren't pornographic, but they were just risque,
I would get right into his face
and say you are so compromised.
You are just flirting with all kinds of temptation
and you need to get out of that.
You need to cut off your hand
and gouge out your eye.
End of story.
That's absolutely what you need to do.
In the words of Titus,
I insist on these things.
I will not let you ignore me.
And then I've got another guy in the church
who teaches the Bible,
loves the Bible, visits widows,
cares for his wife,
seeks to honor the Lord,
and there's a few movies he watches
that I wouldn't watch.
I'll be honest. I don't like that.
I don't like it.
I want everyone to draw their movie lines
right where I draw them.
I do.
I'm fully convinced in my own mind.
And I'm going to have a warm lunch
with that guy.
I'm going to commend all the godliness within him,
and then, we may get around to talking about,
hey, what are these different convictions?
Because this is looking like it would be bad for me.
For me, that would be sin.
How do you do that?
But the way you're handling that
is so different,
than just going on a tirade against everyone
who is not holding the exact same convictions as you.
So beloved,
I leave you with this.
The goal of every sermon you ever hear
is love.
Caring for people.
Having a warm regard for them.
And it needs to come from a good conscience.
You get one of those by plunging
your dead, evil conscience
under the blood of Jesus
that purifies you from all unrighteousness.
And then you begin to walk in His path.
And as you walk in His path,
you will face many people who aren't quite
figuring out His path exactly the way you are.
And our job there is to discern
an honor for the Lord,
and a thankfulness for the Lord.
And to just shower those people with love.
When that kind of love relationship exists,
you will have the best kind of context
to actually have the good discussions
to refine our consciences with
and to think about following Him more closely
and walking in love before Him together.
Oh, may God make us as free
as the gospel wants us to be,
and just enjoy Jesus as much as the gospel
wants us to enjoy Jesus.
Father, thank You so much
for Your grace.
Lord, I have probably revealed
some convictions of my own
in the course of this sermon
that would tempt some to despise me.
I pray that You would just keep us from despising.
I'm probably sure I'll meet some folks
who hold convictions that I think are weaker than my own.
I pray that I would not judge them
or despise them.
Lord, fill us with love.
Lord, we pray that this teaching
would not be used to justify anything
that is clearly wicked or sinful.
Lord, Christian liberty is meant
to help us walk in love and holiness;
not sin and degradation.
Lord, we pray that You'd use this teaching
to free us from all the extra-biblical expectations
we heap on ourselves
that destroy our joy.
Lord, we pray this in Jesus' mighty name.
Amen.