Episode Transcript
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Let's hear God's word. Now from
Romans chapter nine, I begin preaching a
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new section, one of the final
sections here in the book of Romans,
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Romans Chapter Nine, a famous chapter
of an important chapter, one that we
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will go probably slowly through for fun, for edification. In fact, this
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morning I'm only going to be focusing
on verse one, on kind of a
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secondary point that Paul is making here, but I'm going to read versus one
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through three Romans Nine, verses one
through three. This is God's word.
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I am speaking the truth in Christ. I am not lying. My conscience
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bears me witness in the Holy Spirit
that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish
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in my heart, for I could
wish that I myself were accursed and cut
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off from Christ for the sake of
my brothers, my kinsman according to the
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flesh. May God bless his word. You may be seated. My brother
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is a detective and one year I
bought him a book called spy by the
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lie. It's about three former CIA
agents who reveal how to spy the lie,
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how to tell the truth from fiction, how to read people, in
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other words, and figure out who's
telling the truth and WHO's not. Well,
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I got to stay with him on
during our vacation and I saw this
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book on his shelf and I picked
it up. Of course, you know,
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you buy the gift and you like
the gift. Anyway, I picked
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up the book and I started reading. In one of the early stories in
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the book is one of these these
former agents, these CI agency, tells
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this story about how he had to
go do this sort of routine check up
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on an asset that they had.
He goes meets with them. This has
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been a very reliable person for many
years, and then, as he gets
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into the interview, he asks a
kind of routine question and then the guy
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starts dropping all kinds of signals that
this man knows how to read and purports
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to tell you how you will be
able to read that he is lying.
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And what he uncovers, and the
the rest over the next few hours,
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is that this person who was supposedly
this helpful acid had it actually been working
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for the other side and had been
doing so for a long, long time.
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He realized that this person he was
talking to was someone who had been
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living this life of duplicity. They'd
been acting one way or saying one thing
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but really doing another. I wonder
if you can understand what that kind of
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life is like, what that kind
of life feels like. I'd like to
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say that I hope not, but
my guess is is that we all,
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at some point or another, have
found ourselves in this kind of position.
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Perhaps you find yourself deep in this
position, maybe like this man, having
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lived decades of a life. That
is not true. You don't have a
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clear conscience. Perhaps you feel like
David felt when we were reading Psalm thirty
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two. David's conscience was bothering him
in a big way. It's not just
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that he knew something was wrong,
he feels it even in his body.
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Remember what he says. He says
when I kept silent about his sin,
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when he was suppressing the guilt that
he felt instead of confessing it. He
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says my bones wasted away through my
groaning all day long, day and night.
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Your hand was heavy upon me.
My strength was dried up as by
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the heat of summer. I wonder
if you've ever felt like that, if
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you've felt the weight of your conscience, the spirit of God, through your
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conscience, pressing you down, heavy, groaning, losing energy, depressed.
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This is not how Paul speaks at
the beginning of Romans nine. Paul is
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just the opposite of this. He
speaks openly, confidently. He says,
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I am speaking the truth in Christ, I am not lying. And then
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he says, my conscience bears me
witness in the Holy Spirit that I have
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great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my
heart. Now he's going to go on
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and talk about why he has unceasing
sorrow and anguish in his heart. It's
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because of his brothers and sisters,
if fell, his fellow Jews who do
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not know the Lord Jesus. But
this anguish that he's feeling, he wants
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to express it to them and to
us and say this is really true.
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I'm not sort of putting on a
show of emotion for you. I'm not
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really I'm not faking this, I'm
speaking the truth. Notice how strongly he
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wants to affirm this. He says, I'm speaking the truth, I am
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not lying. He does this in
Christ and he adds this my conscience bears
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me witness in the Holy Spirit.
This is how he drives his point home,
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how he affirms the truthfulness of his
statement. He does it on the
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basis of conscience. Conscience a much
a neglected topic, I think, when
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we need to think about our lives
as Christians, our nature, and so
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I want to take the time this
morning and focus on this in particular,
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to think about Paul's example and to
consider how what it is to communicate truthfully
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and, by extension, to live
lives truthfully and openly. If we want
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to communicate truthfully, openly, confidently
freely, as Paul does here, then
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we must have calibrated consciences. We
must have consciences that are attuned to the
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Holy Spirit, to God his word. So I want to do this in
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four points this morning. First,
considering what the conscience is. Second,
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why it's important. Third, how
we make it work or how we calibrate
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it, how we use it well, and then, finally, how to
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clean it. How do we find
what David found when he felt the guilt
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and wait, but then blessedness forgiveness
a lifting? How do we clean it
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when it gets stained with the guilt
of Sin? That'll be our fourth point.
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So first, what is the conscience? I wonder if you've thought about
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this before. It's one of those
topics that will make your brain hurt a
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little bit if you press really hard
on this. And you read a lot,
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but I think you can think of
it very in a very simple way,
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and you could say this, that
the conscience is this God given ability
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that every single one of you have
to make moral judgments. It's a God
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given ability or capacity to make judgments, a particularly about yourself, to say
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I'm doing right or I'm doing wrong. These judgments might be about future actions
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or about past actions. If they're
about future actions, how does your conscience
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work? Well, it works kind
of like a guide. Right. Imagine
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you're on a trail and you have
a guide who's taking you down this trail
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and says, don't go that way. That way is death, that way
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is a cliff. Do go this
way, it's an enormous or it's a
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wonderful view, right. A guide
who says yes, no, yes,
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no, when it comes to possible
actions or future actions. That's what our
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conscience does. It guides us,
but it takes a little different flavor when
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it comes to past actions. When
the guide says go this way and you
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say I'd rather not and you fall
off the edge of the cliff, then
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the guide turns around and acts as
judge and accuses you and says, I
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said no and you went anyway.
It also acts as as an not only
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an accusing but also in excusing.
Sometimes the conscience says you're innocent, you
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are free of guilt, and this
is very important because sometimes we need confidence
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in our innocence. People accuse us
of doing things wrong and we need to
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be able to look inside our hearts
and say, did I mess up or
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did I not? Did I sin
against this person or did I not?
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You remember that story of Martin Luther
standing the Diet of worms and he says,
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unless my conscience is abound by the
word of God, unless you can
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prove to me by reason or by
scripture, I will not recant of these
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things. They were accusing him of
all kinds of things and he says I
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will not deny them. You remember
we when we were reading in First John,
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Chapter two. Where is this talk
about the antichrist or antichrists who deny
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the son? Christians are called to
stand up, even against accusations, and
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affirm the son, to say in
him, I believe the opposite. It's
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also true sometimes we can be condemned
when we're innocent, but sometimes we can
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be thought of as good when we're
really bad, and our conscience bears wait
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there as well, doesn't it?
It tells us you are guilty, you
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should be ashamed, even if everyone
else in your life says you're an amazing
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person, you're so smart, you're
so talented, you're so godly, you're
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so wonderful. But your conscience,
this God give an ability to make moral
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judgments, to tell right and wrong. If it's working properly, which it
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usually is, it knows what's going
on. There's a helpful book. I
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haven't finished it yet, but everything
I've read so far has been good.
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It's called conscience, what it is, how to train it and loving those
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who differ. It's by Andrew Nescelli
and JD Crowley. They define conscience this
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way, and I bring this up
for a particular reason. You'll see in
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the second they say the conscience is
your consciousness of what you believe is right
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or wrong. The conscience is your
consciousness of what you believe is right or
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wrong. I bring this up mostly
for the kids, just to make a
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important definition distinction. Perhaps you've heard
the term of being conscious, of being
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aware of things. That's different than
the thing that you have, your conscience
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that gives you this ability to tell
right from wrong. There's a joke I
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read of a mother who is helping
her son distinguish the differences between conscience,
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the thing that you are, you
are aware of, or unawareness, and
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conscience, which is this thing that
you have, and she says do you
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know the difference? And he says
sure, mom, I know the difference
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conscience. Conscience is where you're aware
of something. Conscience is when you wish
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you weren't. There's this way would
we say, I don't want to be
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aware of that, I don't want
to deal with that. Unfortunately, that's
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a bad way of dealing with our
conscience. One more thing to add that
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might be helpful to you in thinking
about your conscience, what it is as
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a capacity, as it as an
ability, I think you might compare it
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to one of your five senses.
God has given you these senses that you
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might interact with the physical world around
you. He's given you your eyes,
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for example, which can tell distance, color, proportion the sizes of things.
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He's given you a sense of smell. I'm kids, you know the
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difference right between a flower that smells
really nice and a stink bug that sprays
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you or a putrid potato that you
find in the bottom of your pantry.
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Do you know the difference between these
things? Because God has given you a
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nose to tell the difference. It
has this ability. Same thing with touch.
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We can tell things that are smooth, rough, hot, cold because
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of this ability that God has given
us. or conscience is like that,
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except it doesn't sense smelly things or
feeling things or visual SI things. It
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senses moral things, right, wrong, good, bad. When in that
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way it we feel it. We
feel right and wrong, we feel good
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and bad. That means conscience is
different than just knowledge. It's different than
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just knowing something is right knowing something
is wrong. It's having it impressed on
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your heart, like smelling right or
smelling wrong. We're seeing right or seeing
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wrong. It's also, we might
say, not the Holy Spirit. The
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Holy Spirit may speak to us here. Paul makes that point. He says,
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I'm not lying, my conscience bears
me witness in the Holy Spirit.
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The Holy Spirit, just as he
can open a blind man's eyes or cause
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you to see an angel that you
didn't see before, as he does.
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We see examples of this in scripture, he can also open our consciences up,
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soften them, work on them,
teach them, but they're different,
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they're distinguished from one another. We
know that everyone has a conscience, but
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not everyone has the Holy Spirit.
Two places we know that everyone has a
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conscience, and will be important for
some of our thinking about conscience later on,
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are two versus Paul has already given
to us in Romans. First,
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Romans one, a versus that couple
verses there, and then one in verse
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two. I'll read them to you. Listen to versus Romans One, versus
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nineteen through twenty. He says about
all people who have been created, for
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what can be known about God is
plain to them because God has shown it
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to them, for his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature,
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have been clearly perceived. Like you
see something, you smell something,
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you perceive God's Eternal Power and divine
nature ever since the creation of the world
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in the things that have been made
so that they are without excuse. You
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see what Paul say. He says
that in the world that God has made,
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we that we live in, we
are able to see this world and
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when we see it we know certain
things, we perceive certain things, not
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just color, not just smell,
but morality. Right and wrong, good
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and bad, and because of this
we are without excuse. We can't go
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before God and say, I didn't
know. He says, you did know,
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you have a conscience, I gave
it to you. You tell these
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things in the very world that has
been made. Paul makes this point even
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further in Romans too, verses fourteen
through sixteen. Here he's talking about people,
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a group of people, the gentiles, who have not received the law
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of God, people that didn't receive
God's word like the Jews did. And
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listen to what he says about those
people. He says, for when gentiles
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who do not have the law,
by that means that he means the Torah,
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the five books, the first five
books of the Bible, or the
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Mosaic Law, when the gentiles who
do not have the law by nature do
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what the law requires, they are
a law of themselves. Even though they
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don't have the law. They show, the gentiles show by this behavior that
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the work of the law is written
on their hearts. While they are conscience
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also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts
accused or even excuse them. So he
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want to see what he's saying.
He's saying you don't have to know right
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and wrong only from God's word.
Certainly, we find it there and we
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find it with a lot of clarity
and it gives us direction and it definitely
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rules above even that which we find
in creation. But nevertheless he is saying
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that no one Jew gentile. Everyone
is under the law of God, because
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everyone has a conscience. Everyone knows
these things. So what is a conscience?
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A conscience is something that every one
of us has our hearts, and
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the Bible teaches us this and it
guides us in right and wrong and,
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depending on whether we follow it or
not, it will do as it does
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for these gentiles. It will either
excuse us and say, good job,
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you did it right, or it
will accuse us and say you did it
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wrong, you sinned. Well,
now that we're on the same page about
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what conscience is, let's talk about
why it's so important for communicating truthfully,
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for living our lives openly and confidently, as Paul is here in Romans nine.
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To consider that, to consider the
importance of our conscience, and a
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properly calibrated one. Consider what happens
when you ignore your conscience. Consider what
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happens when you do the thing that
you know you ought not to do.
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I was recently. I was or
I received a letter from someone recently who
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was talking about an addiction to pornography
at work and he was describing how this
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thing that was going on in his
life was destroying him in every other area
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of his life. The shame that
and the guilt that was going on there,
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that secret guilt and shame was affecting
all kinds of other things. Who
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was tearing him apart, not just
the sin, and of course it does
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that too. That's a whole other
topic. But what I'm saying is the
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is conscience, the shame of it. Conscience has another thing that it does
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as well. It has this way
of kind of not only affecting your other
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live, the other areas of your
life, when we go against it,
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when we don't listen to it,
but has this way of kind of hanging
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on to us, of gripping us. Remember David's description right his bones wasting
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away, is groaning all day long. Perhaps you've felt this way. Perhaps
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there's been some deed that you've not
done or an obligation that you haven't fulfilled.
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Maybe you said you'd be there for
someone and you weren't maybe you said
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you'd pay for something and you didn't, or you tell the truth and you
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lied. These things can stay with
you for a long, long time.
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People who confess regrets on their deathbed, seeking to clear their conscience, will
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sometimes tell of things decades and decades
and decades ago, things long ago,
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sometimes things even very small. Maybe
we think, oh, it's not a
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big deal that you stole a pencil
from your teacher when you were five.
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But it is a big deal,
isn't it? It's a sin. Theft
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is a sin and our consciences know
that and we carry those things with us
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for a long time. God knows
our hearts, but so do you.
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He bilds, builds into us this
ability to know ourselves, and so we
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see the importance of conscience and the
way that the consequences it has when we
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go against it. Someone compared conscience
to a square, a square peg in
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a square hole. And when we
go start to go against to the things
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that the conscience is guiding, that
square pag and that square hole starts to
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turn and pushes against those walls and
it hurts and it hurts in our hearts
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and it pushes and it grinds,
but that leads us to an even another
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point. What happens when we try
to suppress that feeling, when we try
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to push down that and say I
don't feel it, I don't feel it,
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it's not important. Well, those
corners get rounded, that PAG turns
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and turns until there's one day just
a hole and it spins freely, and
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then we become people that do bad
things and we do them easily. You
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See, one of the reasons conscious
is important is because it prevents us,
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it keeps us, it guides us. Who would want to go on a
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dangerous and treacherous hike without a guide? These sure PA's that head people up
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Mount Everest? They are very important
to these adventurers. They are their life.
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Paul talks about a conscience that can
be seared. You know what searing
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is like? When you cook a
piece of meat and you see the outside
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of it so that moisture can't really
get in and out you you get it
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really hot so that it closes it
up. That's something that can happen to
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our conscience when we don't listen to
it, when we don't pay attention to
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it. One of the ways you
can deal with a guilty conscience, in
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other words, is by ignoring it, suppressing it, not dealing with it.
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Perhaps that was even your plan when
I started talking about conscience this morning
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and you said, or your conscience
said, Oh, okay, we know
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how this game goes. We start
feeling these feelings, we start feeling the
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pressure, we start feeling that peg
turning and you start employing, maybe you've
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already begun employing, those strategies that
you're so practiced in to avoid the feeling.
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I understand this, of course it's
painful. A guilty conscience is painful.
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David understands this, Paul understands this. But I promise you there is
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a better solution than suppression. It's
salvation, it's cleansing in Jesus. But
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for the moment the implorant point is
this. Your conscience is important. Ignoring
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it is dangerous and even deadly.
It leads to dark deeds, it sinks
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its clause in you. It brings
all sorts of consequences in your life,
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depression and more and more. You
can also consider the opposite it. Consider
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what life is like with a clean
conscience, a clear conscience. Perhaps you've
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met people like this, perhaps you
are a person by God's grace, who
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does live your life freely and clearly? Second Corinthians, Second Corinthians one.
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That's not correct. Let's try to
Second Corinthians. Let's go forth. Second
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Corinthians, fourth to I'm sorry,
can't read my writing. He says.
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Okay, we're in First Corinthians.
That's the problem. Yeah, Second Corinthians,
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one hundred and twelve heats A.
Paul says this, and I want
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you to imagine this. Can this
be your words? Can these be your
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words as a Christian? Okay,
are you ready? Second Corinthians one twelve
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for our boast. Is this the
testimony of our conscience, that we behaved
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in the world with simplicity, with
Godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom but
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by the grace of God, and
supremely so toward you? Ah, doesn't
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that feel good to just hear that, to know people who come up to
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you and say hey, and you
know there's no ulterior motives, there's no
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sneaking thing behind it, they're just
saying hi. Paul says. Their testimony.
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There are boast. Is this the
testimony of our conscience? We behaved
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in the world well? Isn't it
nice to be able to say things like
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that when we don't pay attention to
our conscience, in other words, it
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binds, it grinds at Clause,
at Nas when we do pay attention to
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our conscience, we have confidence,
openness, freedom, peace. Second Corinthians
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for verse two. But we have
renounced disgraceful and underhanded ways. We refuse
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to practice cunning or to tamper with
God's word, but by the open statement
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of the truth, we would commend
ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of
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God's word. Paul so confident about
the way he's living, about what he's
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doing, that he says, examine
your own conscience about these things. Are
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we not doing it right? Judge
by yourself, your own God given capacity
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for right and wrong, and and
you will see these things. In case
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you think that, well, this
is just for Paul, a super duper
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Paul. It's not. Listen to
what Peter says in First Peter, Verse
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Sixteen. He speaks to us,
to you, and says I I'll start
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in verse fifteen, he says,
but in your hearts, honor Christ does,
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the Christ, the Lord is holy, always being prepared to make a
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defense to anyone who asks you for
the reason for the hope that is in
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you. So you see what he's
saying. HE SAYS BE READY TO AFFIRM
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JESUS CHRIST, be ready to do
what John asks us to do in First
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John Too, and then he says, but do it in a certain way.
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Reading on, yet do it with
gentleness and respect, having a good
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conscience, so that when you are
slander those who revile your good behavior in
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Christ may be put to shame,
for it's better to suffer doing good.
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If that, if that should be
God's will, then for doing evil.
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See what Peter say. He's saying
you are going to have to suffer for
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Jesus Sake, you're going to have
to go out and speak of him.
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But when that happens, make sure
that you're living your lives in an open
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way, that you have a good
conscience, a clear conscience, so that
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when people slander you, which they
will, and accuse you of things,
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you'll be able to say I stand
on the truth, my works prove themselves.
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I don't have to dance, I
don't have to pretend, I don't
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have to do some kind of cunning
twist here. I live my life openly.
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Accuse me all you want. This
is what Jesus wants for us.
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This is the kind of life he
wants us to live. It doesn't happen
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by searing our consciences, ignoring them, suppressing them. We live with a
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good conscience by becoming sensitive to it. And this takes us to our third
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point. We've seen it's importance.
Well, how do we use it?
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Well, how do we calibrate it? The conscience is this. God give
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an ability to discern right and from
wrong, to feel it in your heart.
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But though it is in us,
it's not perfect. Same with your
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other senses. Right, some of
you have not good eyesight, some of
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you have a bad sense of smell, maybe the nerve endings in your fingers
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don't work quite like they should anymore. The same can happen for conscience.
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Except one of the good things about
consciences it can actually get stronger with age
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rather than weaker. But conscience also
can go wrong through ignorance, through suppression,
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through searing, through lack of use. Remember Peter, for example.
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He had to have his conscience changed. Remember he said, I won't eat
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any of the forbidden foods, I
won't mix myself with the gentiles. And
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the Lord came to him and said, Peter, you will, and Peter
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said, okay. Peter had to
change change his conscience kind of on the
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spot. He had to inform,
or rather the Lord informed, his misinformed
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conscience and he had to change quickly. Maybe that's happened with you too.
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Maybe there's been some issue on alcohol
or music or schooling or all kinds of
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other things that you've had to say. Well, I guess the Bible doesn't
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say that after all. Or I
guess the Bible does say that and I
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better change my mind. PS.
This happened to me in a later part
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of Romans nine, as will get
to. There came a point where I
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a doctrine wants when I had to
sort of submit myself and say, I
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don't like it, but this is
what the word teaches. Anyway, the
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the conscience in other words, needs
to be calibrated. We need to correct
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it when it's wrong, we need
to fine tune it. I knew a
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teacher once, a cello teacher,
who every time her students would come in,
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she'd say sing an a and they'd
sing an a and then she play
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it on the piano to see whether
they got it right or wrong. And
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as over time. What would happen
is the students got better and better.
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They're hearing got better and better.
They were calibrating their senses to a standard,
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and this is what we are to
do too. When Paul says that
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his conscience bears him witness in the
Holy Spirit in Romans nine, he's saying
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that he's submitted his conscience to the
Lord. He's calibrating it according to God's
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word. He's using the Holy Spirit
as his tuner to tell him yes or
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no, right or wrong. So
the Bible teaches us that after the fall,
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your conscience still works, but not
always perfectly, and we can certainly
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do it harm. Some of you
have done your consciences great harm, like
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a warning light that's gone on your
dashboard and you've decided to ignore it for
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a long time. You hardly pay
attention anymore. Let this word of God
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be to you a message that says
wake up, that lights important. You
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need to pay attention to it.
Let the truth of God's words speak to
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your heart and if your conscience is
over sensitive, like a like a smoke
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alarm that cold keeps going off,
even when when nothing's burning in the house,
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use the God's word here as well. The devil is the great accuser.
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He tells us all kinds of wise
he tells us that we've done wrong
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and of him when we haven't done
wrong. Stop Him in his tracks,
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speak to him in the Holy Spirit, use God's word, study God's word,
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calibrate your conscience so that you might
know when you've unright and when you've
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done wrong. Well, that brings
us to our final point. If your
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conscience has been properly calibrated, if
your conscience is in good working order and
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you're do using it will then I
can say with a lot of confidence that
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each one of us is going to
find areas in our lives that need to
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be fixed. We're going to find
things that we've lost the can't be regained,
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things that we've done that we can't
be taken back. Maybe there are
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some things that you can fix,
something you've stolen that needs to be returned,
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something you've said that needs to be
apologized for. Do this and do
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it immediately. But sometimes those opportunities
are gone and the stains set in,
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and this is why people in the
latter years of their lives can ache and
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Groan and find themselves under much,
much sorrow. But God speaks to this
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too. No matter where you are
in your lives and no matter how clear
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or not clear your consciences, the
one who made your conscience, the one
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who corrects your conscience, also gives
an opportunity to you to have your conscience
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cleaned by Jesus himself. In some
ways, the more our conscience is calibrated,
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the more we understand, the more
we realize God's perfect standard of holiness,
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the more will recognize in our own
hearts how bad things are and we
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begin to look at things in a
new way. It's like if you walk
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in and your first glance you say, Oh, this carpets pretty good,
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and then you start working on one
little stay and you know and there's one
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over here and there's one over here
and there's one over here. Next thing
390
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you know, you find yourself doing
lots and lots and lots of spotting and
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cleaning. The thing is, brothers
and sisters, there's no amount of spotting
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and cleaning that we can do to
perfectly clear our consciences. And the Old
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Testament God had a system of sacrifices
that that helped with this to a degree.
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A symptom of sacrifices and where you
would take an animal and, in
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essence, put your sins on that
animal and that animal would be put to
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death. That's the seriousness of our
guilt and sin. That animal would be
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put to death and you would say
they're my conscience is cleared, right,
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because now it's on that animal.
God has accepted that sacrifice. He did
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this so that our consciences could be
cleared, so that we could walk away,
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so that we could worship God and
live under him. But, as
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we know, this wasn't a perfect
system. The cont the offers, the
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sacrifices had to be offered over and
over and over again, because ultimately they
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were pointing to something else. And
you know what it is, don't you?
404
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The sacrifice of Jesus Christ, this
detergent blood of his that perfectly cleanses
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all of our sin, all of
our guilt, washing it away. Do
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you want a clean conscience? Well, living according to it's a good start,
407
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but because of original sin, because
we start out with a bunch of
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stains and everything dirty and filthy from
the very beginning, the hope of cleaning
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your own conscience is lost. Listen
to what God says about Jesus here in
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Hebrews Nine, he says, according
to this arrangement, that arrangement of sacrifices,
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gifts and sacrifices are offered, that
cannot perfect the consciences, of the
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conscience of the worshipper, but only
deal with food and drink and various washings.
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Then he goes on to say in
verse fourteen, how much more will
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the blood of Christ, who threw
the eternal spirit, offered himself with out
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blemish to God, purify our conscience
from dead works to serve the Living God?
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Purify how would you like? A
pure conscience, a clean conscience,
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a clear conscience? See, brothers
and sisters, it's not enough to know
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that, oh, I stained my
shirt. That doesn't clear it. To
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recognize your conscience, to be sensitive, to call your conscience only tells you
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the mess that's there. It must
be cleansed, it must be made clear,
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it must be purified, and that's
what Jesus does. He purifies our
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conscience from dead works to serve the
Living God. And that cleansing that Jesus
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offers in the cross is a complete
cleansing, a full cleansing, every nook
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and cranny, every detail every spot
is gone as wide as wool. It's
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one of the ways that scripture describes
our forgiveness, and this goes on in
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our lives. When we sin again
and again, we come to Jesus again
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and again, and you know what
he does? He keeps cleaning us,
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he keeps washing us over and over
and over, and that makes a Christian
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a bold person, a courageous person, a Christian whose living in faith in
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the blood cleansing power of Jesus,
in the purifying conscious work that God does,
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is a person who goes out into
the world and says, I'm ready
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to testify to Christ bring whatever accusation
you may against me. It's a person
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who can enter freely into worship.
Listen again to Hebrews, the next chapter,
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Verse Ten, Verse Twenty Two.
Let us draw near with a true
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heart, in full assurance of our
faith, or of faith, with hearts
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sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and
our bodies washed with pure water the pot.
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The writer here points to our Baptisms, points to the work that Jesus
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has done on the cross, this
sprinkling cleaning. He says now you can
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go forth and to worship, you
can go before God and you can say
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praise him, you can worship him, you can thank him, you can
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seek him, you can know him
as your heavenly father, because you don't
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come before him as one who is
dirty, as one who's trying to clean
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himself, as one who's trying to
wash away or atone from your atone for
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your own sins. We come with
the sprinkling of the spirit, but the
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washing of Christ. That's how you
have a clean conscience, by the Work
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of God working in you, through
faith in him. So where are you
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at to day? Is your conscience
clear? Is it clean? If not,
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then seek the Lord. The Bible
promises that Jesus will and can and
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does forgive the conscience. He purifies
it, he makes it anew, he
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gives what David describes as a clean
heart, a refreshed heart, a new
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heart. And if your conscience is
clear as one who has been washed by
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the word, who lives according to
him, then be encouraged, be thankful
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and praise God for his work in
you. Continue to become more and more
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sensitive to your conscience and then use
your strength not to oppress others or make
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fun of others, but to leave
them to the same Lord who also makes
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all, makes others clean by the
cleaning and calibrating grace of God. May
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All of us learn how to live
our lives with good and clear consciences.
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Let us pray
