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Source: https://www.sermonindex.net/speakers/scott-macleod/the-conscience/
I'd like to pick up the fleeing aspect. Let's go to Genesis, please, and Chapter 3. And this will tie back to what we spoke on Gerald Boehm. I've been studying for the longest while 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, been impressed with themes that are through that.
What I want you to keep in mind is you have an older man speaking to a younger man, Paul to Timothy. And it's just been encouraging to me just what he would leave with that younger man. And I'll show you something in a minute that I never noticed before, but we'll just start here quickly.
Genesis Chapter 3 and verse number 11. This might not seem apparent to you, but bear with me. Genesis 3, verse 11, we know sin has happened. The Lord comes into the garden. He's dealing with Adam, verse 11.
Notice this, and he said, that is referring to God, notice, who told thee that thou was naked? You ever notice that before? It's not what told you, it's who. Really what's being identified is his own conscience.
That is where the conscience became alive. That's what I want to speak on for just a minute, is your conscience. You're not going to find the actual word conscience in the Old Testament, it's in the New Testament many times.
Of course, conscience is referred to in the Old Testament in different ways, we have it here. Even the word is very interesting, co-science. Science is knowing, co is what is shared. So it's a shared knowledge.
So you think of that in the practical sense. I know something, you know the same thing, it's shared. When either of us break it, there's what happened in Genesis chapter three. Now, I'm not going to take time right now, but you can search this through.
When you and I got saved by God, Hebrews chapter nine, verse 14, Hebrews chapter 10, verse 22, that conscience was purged. That is now what God is going to use to speak to us. That's really what I want to speak on, is the importance of the conscience.
That is something that Paul by the Spirit identifies to young Timothy. And if you go through 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy, you're going to find that conscience brought up a number of times. And that's what we're quickly going to look at.
Now let's go over to 1 Peter chapter three, just before I get into 1 Timothy, go to 1 Peter chapter three. We hear this verse read many times in regards to baptism, 1 Peter chapter three, and look at verse number 21.
I find this to be very telling, what we read here. Verse 21, the like figure, referring to the water, just proceeded in verse 20, the like figure where we're onto even baptism doth also now save us. Well, now we know that's not in relation to the soul, but from the wickedness of this world, identifying with Christ, separation from the world, we won't go too far into that.
Not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, listen, but the answer of a good conscience toward God. I find that interesting that that comes in in relation to baptism. The moment I got saved, my conscience, which was affected by sin, deadened by sin, contaminated by sin, it was purged.
It was cleansed. It was washed. Now here I am as a young believer, reading the word of God, and what happens? The word of God speaks to me through conscience that has been purged. And I become aware of the step of baptism, obedience.
See how important that is. So really I would like you and myself to examine how's your conscience? You're gonna find out how important that is. Now, I have got a very simple, I've been trying to figure out how can I explain conscience?
What is it? So I'm gonna give you what I have come to appreciate, and this will show you how ignorant I am in biology, but I'm gonna speak about something just, I want you to think of a mother carrying a child for a minute, and there's that child in the womb, and that infant, unborn child, is in something called the placenta.
I think I got that right. And there's that umbilical cord that goes out to the edge. Now, here's what I'm getting at. You might think that's a little strange, but just listen to me for a second. The blood flow in the child is separate from the blood flow in the mother, but at a point where that placenta is to the mother, there's like a membrane where the nutrients in the blood of the mother flow this way, and here's the blood flow in the child flowing this way.
They don't mix together, they're two separate bloods, but what happens is through that membrane, the nutrients are drawn up, passed through the membrane, put into the blood of the child, and the child is fed.
That, to me, is how I envision conscience. God is wanting to speak to me. Now, what is going to impede that speaking? My conscience. Do I have a guilty conscience? In Timothy, you'll read about a seared conscience.
I can have a conscience affected by sin. I can have a conscience affected by so many, come back to the illustration. If that membrane gets somehow damaged, what's going to happen? The child is going to suffer from the nutrients being passed over from the mother.
That is how God speaks to me as a Christian. That is why you will hear individuals that take the platform constantly remind us as believers, are you reading the Bible consistently? Are you taking time to read the Bible consistently?
Are you taking time, as we've been hearing, to meditate on the Bible, to study the Bible? What happens when we do that? That conscience is kept pure, clean, alive. That's my God speaking to me. What happens when I start to push away the reading time, and I become so busy that I can't even remember what I read or where I read?
What happens? I start to drift. Isn't it interesting when we look at, I found this interesting, this is something I never knew before. You do a word search on the word shipwreck. Only appears twice in our Bible, in the New Testament.
It appears once in the physical, that's Paul in 1 Corinthians, referring to shipwreck many times, or 2 Corinthians, sorry. And the only other time it appears is in 1 Timothy, referring to a spiritual shipwreck.
Do you know what preceded that statement? These men threw overboard their conscience. Just tossed it overboard, we'll read it. And as a result of their conscience being thrown overboard, they erred, shipwrecked.
Now there is this man, Paul, this older man, this aged man, and he's looking at this young man with potential. And anyone that takes a platform as they look over the audience, they can't help but think potential.
Think of it. The devil knows that too. What is the devil gonna try to do? The devil has one goal for you and I, shipwrecked, spiritually speaking. That's what he wants. What does God want? No shipwreck.
He wants us sailing through this little time that we've been given, bringing glory to him. How are we going to do that, dear child of God? Keep in the Bible. As we've been hearing, keep feeding, keep allowing our shepherd to feed us.
It's so important. So I wanna quickly go now over to 1 Timothy 1, and notice just a few of these verses. 1 Timothy 1. I'd encourage you to go through and just sort of study this out a little bit. Look at what we have here in verse number six.
Now this is Paul speaking to this young man and he's warning him. Notice what we have here. 1 Timothy 1, verse number six. From which, now if you have a Newberry Bible, it's very helpful. Sometimes you'll get which in the plural and which in the singular.
So 1 Timothy 1, verse six. From which, it's in the plural. So you have to look back at the preceding verse to see what he's talking about. Look at what you have in verse five. Now the end of the commandment, this is the commandment that Paul is giving to Timothy, is charity, love, out of a pure heart and of a good conscience and of faith unfeigned.
Faith in what you're reading. So from which, faith unfeigned, good conscience, pure heart. From which some have swerved, have turned aside on the vain janglings. See what happened? The minute I start to turn from a good conscience, what happens?
There's only one thing that can happen. I start to err. I start to swerve. You ever wonder? I'm sure you can do it. I've been in assembly fellowship for 28 years. I have shared platforms with people that are no longer in assembly fellowship.
I have sat and listened to individuals give ministry that are no longer in assembly fellowship. People with gift. You ever sometimes sit back and go, what happened? How did it happen? Listen to what the Bible says.
You keep your conscience good and clean. You'll always be in God's assembly fellowship. Do you believe that? That's what this Bible would encourage. This Bible by the spirit of God can only direct one way.
It's toward truth. How does God do that? He does it through me reading through the conscience. And I see it and I'm responding to it. What happens when I start to distance myself from the word of God or something comes into my life that causes that conscience to wilt?
I immediately start to err. You're gonna notice, I would encourage you to do this. Take your Greek concordance and do a study. You'll get the different words for err, err, err. And Timothy will use two different ones.
First one is very general. It's just the idea of just starting to sway. Okay? Then as you move through Timothy chapter six, he'll use a stronger word, which means you've completely missed the mark. Now listen, you can't miss the mark.
If you haven't first swayed. It's very gentle. It's very subtle. The devil knew what he was doing when he went into the garden. I always remind people of this. I always remind myself of this. Eve wasn't one bit frightened when that serpent started to speak to her.
She wasn't afraid. There was actually an alarmant. A longing. And here we are with the full story before us. And we're saying, Eve, you're starting to sway. What are you doing? If you had said to her, Eve, stop right there.
Just stop right for a minute. Do you realize you're starting to sway? No, I'm not. No. What was the end result? Completely missed the mark. Now in my audience today, and myself, as I analyze my Christian life at the end of a conference, is there any of us starting to sway?
It's so, wow, I never really thought of it that way. It's never apparent at first. But whenever you start to diverge, as you know, I fly a lot with Murray, and a couple of times on the way out here, you know, you're in the plane, you get distracted.
We have it in autopilot. Sometimes we're sleeping. Sometimes we're eating. All right, that's fine. But you know what we're unaware of? It's all the different currents outside pushing on that plane. And a couple of times the controller had to say, what's your heading?
What started way back is just a little tiny drift. You add 100 nautical miles onto that, it's no longer a little drift. Now it's half a mile. But it started so subtle, I didn't even feel it. And you always had to go keep checking the instruments.
That's like conscience. How many of us read the word of God, really read the word of God, and something tweaks you? Ooh. Can I pick up something that my brother said, which I amend 110 Did anyone hear when he mentioned about the word of God, what it teaches on long hair?
Did anyone here go, ooh, that's a good thing. That's your conscience. Now what are you gonna do about it? Oh, you know, that's really not all that important. Yes, it is. It's coming from the word of God.
And what starts as a little, keeps going. That's how the devil works, dear child of God. The devil is not gonna come into my life and go, boom, I'm here to tempt you, Scott. I'd be very aware of that if that happened.
He just slides in. This is what Paul is trying to encourage this man. Watch your conscience. Come to the next, go down to verse 19. Look at this. Verse 19. Now notice, we're coming out of verse 18. That by them thou mightest war a good warfare.
I think we all want that. Verse 19. Holding faith and a good conscience. Here it comes again. Notice, which now goes to the singular. Which some having put away. So the which is referring to just the single thing that passed, a good conscience.
Which some having put away concerning faith. You have the definite article in the Greek. The faith have made shipwrecked of whom is Hymenaeus and Alexander. That's sad. There was no need of this. That is absolutely sad.
It was a conscious choice. I'm going to put overboard a good conscience. As a result, I start to swerve. And that keeps going, that path. What is the end result? Shipwreck. I believe these people are saved.
I believe they've been delivered to the devil. Verse number 20. For the destruction of the flesh. Which started the whole thing to begin with. So let us all analyze our lives. Where are we? Where are we at?
I can remember, I can remember. My father taught me this lesson. And I've used it many times. Sitting with individuals that have gotten away from God. And thank God there's a measure. They want to be restored.
And I just simply draw a line like my father did. Here's where you got saved. Give me the date. Write the date. And then you just draw a straight line. This is God's path for you. There it is. Now, you got to back up, back up, back up, back up.
Where did you start to get away from God? Ask them a question. They might say, well, I would say it was right here when I left the assembly. Or whatever it might be. Do you know what my father taught me?
You got to go way back prior to that. Where it started. Never look just right around here. This is only an outworking of this. And you draw that line. And you put a dot where they got away from God. And you start to draw that line in a downward road.
Do you know what's happening? The direction, the distance is getting greater from where God intended you to be. Dear child of God, the longer you stay in that situation, the more distance you got to get back to where God wants you to be.
Turn around now. Let the word of God speak to your conscience. And that will put you back where God purposed you to be. Now, I could take time to read 1 Timothy chapter four. There's where you read a seared conscience.
And I just might touch on that in a minute if I have time. Look at chapter three and verse nine. Look at this expression here. Chapter three and verse nine. This has to do with the doctrine once again.
Verse nine, holding the mystery of the faith, referring to the word of God, what has been unveiled to us from God, in a pure conscience. See how important it is? Understanding this Bible has to come through that conscience.
That's God's, understanding the Bible is not something that is just the intelligence of a person. It's light that is given by God. Coming back to the feeding, coming back to the following. So are we as believers, are we dedicated to understanding this book?
Don't sit there and say, well, that's why we have you preachers. I mean, man, if I had a bar of soap, I'd wash your mouth right now. No! Do not leave it up to us. Challenge yourself with all of the different truths that are in the Bible.
It's a goldmine, dear child of God, studying the word of God. You will find when you give yourself to it, you just wanna give more time to it. Becomes very enjoyable. And then you start to form a habit, okay?
So keep that in mind. Come to chapter four for just a minute. This is where we're going to end because we wanna end promptly at four o 'clock. Listen to this now in chapter four. I find this amazing where it appears right in chapter four.
Look at verse number one. 1 Timothy 4, verse one. Now the spirit speaketh expressly, clearly. Obviously in the context, that is the spirit of God speaking through the apostle Paul as he's writing, all right?
So here's the spirit of God. So what we have in that little phrase is this. You've got the spiritual world and the physical world linked, how? Through a literal man called Paul. And the spirit of God is using the pen and the mind of this man.
And he's writing this letter. Now the spirit of God speaketh expressly that in the latter times, some shall depart from the faith. What did we find out already? Faith and conscience go hand in hand. Departing from the faith is an evidence that the conscience is going wrong.
Okay, keep that in mind. Giving heed to seducing spirits. How is that going to happen? Seducing spirits linked with the devil are going to use physical men or women, verbalizing things. Over on this side, you have the spirit of God using the apostle Paul, verbalizing truth.
That is what's in the world, dear child of God. Remember what we spoke about yesterday about Jeroboam? Remember the two calves that he built going against the word of God? He had a bad conscience. God couldn't speak to him anymore.
Do you remember what we found out in our little story that actually behind the golden calves were demons? You know the sad thing that I did? I never had time to do it yesterday. You go to the end of chapter 13 of 1 Kings and you know the word of God will tell us that Jeroboam was doing?
He was a king, okay, but he also became a priest of the high places. Do you know what he did not realize? He probably thought that he was a priest serving the Lord God, but he was only a priest serving the devil.
Seducing spirits. That's the warfare that we are in. There is a spiritual world out there, dear child of God, that is against us. It will use, it will cloak that false doctrine under such religious pretense.
How do you, did you ever notice the ingredients on a box of rat poison? 99 good, 1 poison. That's what makes it more dangerous. You know what my brother said? I don't think a lot of us believe this today.
I believe that the New Testament assembly is the only place where any child of God should be. I thank God for the truth that we have and for the, I'll have to end with this. I find God's wisdom. God always intends, dear child of God, just to back up what my brother said about this idea of trying to reinvent the wheel and different ways of teaching.
God always envisions his people to be taught as a group in the presence of elders, in the presence of others that are gifted to teach so that what is being taught, if it's wrong, right away can be caught.
You know what happens in a one-man ministry where one man has all the say and all the authority? Whatever he says goes. And no one would dare stand up and say, oh, that's not right. So dear child of God, thank God for the assembly.
Thank God for the word of God. Keep your conscience pure. Keep it good. Keep it aligned with this Bible. The minute this Bible speaks to you on something, don't hesitate, follow it, do it, and you're guaranteed not to end your Christian life shipwrecked.
May God bless you. Bless his word.