Keep sharing good news without ads.
Source: https://www.sermonindex.net/speakers/bruce-rodgers/the-conscience-part-2/
Now, I would like to continue looking a little at the subject of conscience, and we're going to notice a verse that's very well known in the Proverbs, Proverbs 11 and 30. Proverbs 11 and 30, it says, the fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and he that winneth souls is wise.
The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life. Now I've seen that verse there for a long time, and I've heard it preached many times, but it wasn't until I was thinking about the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil that it clicked with me that not only is the Lord Jesus the ultimate tree of life, and that through coming to him, we can enter into a life that is full, that is satisfying, the life of eternity.
He is the very fountain of life, and that's another expression that is in the Proverbs as well, the fountain of life. We have a fountain of life, we have a tree of life, and here it's brought to us. Now this should be a very precious thing to us to realize.
God wants to have in this world Christians among the unbelievers as trees of life, that others seeing your life will be able to realize that person has something valuable, that person's life means something.
Unfortunately, if you're not enjoying the Lord, you may not be able to convey that which is so important, so precious. I'm sure you know that the gospel in its power in a community depends largely upon the testimony of the Christians who are in that community.
Now I want you just to take that thought and remember that not only is there today so many opportunities for evil, but there are also those who are of God who can show the life that is of God and attract others to the Savior to find life.
So I want to spend a little time looking at sources of knowledge, I'm thinking still of the development of conscience. What is it that forms our conscience and makes it why we make the decisions we do and why other people do?
Sources of knowledge that create moral standards. Of course, the very first one is God Himself. And God has created us with a moral capacity, with a moral sensitivity. And His Word, the Bible, is really an unfolding revelation of the character of God.
And it's given to us in so many different ways in the scriptures that we can come to understand the character of God, the principles of God, and which form our awareness of what is morally honorable. What is moral truth?
Now, I'm going to just try to suggest that while conscience is primarily adjudicating, making its judgments in the realm of moral truth, principles of honesty, principles of integrity, principles of faithfulness, principles of love and kindness and purity, these are the areas of life that conscience adjudicates.
But what does it base it on? Well, it bases it upon an assumed knowledge, an assumed reality of God Himself and what He is. It's one of the interesting things, although a sad thing, to listen to men who teach the evolutionary philosophy of life as an explanation of reality, how they try to connect morality to it.
In the beginning, when evolution became popular and began to take over in the minds of men as the scientific basis for truth and knowledge and reality, they used it to reject morality. And just as an example that I will relate to you, when what is called the gay movement began to be pushed out into the public forum, they were very insistent that it was not a moral issue, it was a human rights issue.
That's how they got it in the door. But it's interesting that now they will call it a moral issue because now they are preaching the morality of tolerance, the morality of plurality, where there is no ultimate reality of truth, but we are to accept everything and everyone.
And so now they will insist on it being a moral issue, and they will chastise Christians for having an uncharitable attitude, an unloving attitude, a hateful attitude. They will throw all of these loaded terms at us, the very things that we cherish of love and honor.
Now over in Proverbs 9, there are so many scriptures you could read for this, but Proverbs 9 and 10 says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the holy is understanding.
If we are going to be able to have a properly functioning conscience, it needs to begin with God and what God has revealed about himself. The fear of the Lord, the acknowledgement of God, the reverence and respect for God and all that he is, forms the basis of both knowledge and wisdom.
Now all other sources of moral standards that are in the world today either confirm this fundamental source of knowledge or weaken it, deny it, counteract it. So I'm just going to touch on a few of them.
The first thing is a godly Christian home. A godly Christian home has the greatest potential to support, to strengthen, to establish a healthy conscience, a good conscience. And really, the revelation of God as Father is becoming more and more precious to me because my relationship to God and all the blessings that I enjoy is in that relationship of being a child of my Father, a child of the living God.
And as I recognize the Lord Jesus as the unique Son of God who has in his redemption of us brought us into the relationship that only rightly belongs to him, we in grace are brought into the wonderful relationship of sons of God with the living Father, eternal Father.
And so in a godly Christian home, Father and Mother are representing God to the children. And what you portray, how you behave before them, how you care for them, if you provide for them a stability, a security in your faithful love to each other, in your compassionate care of them, you are representing the character of God.
And those children growing up will be able to have an appreciation of the living God instinctively because they know what a loving father and a loving mother are really like. And also in discipline, they will learn the holiness of the character of God and the fact that sin cannot be tolerated and accommodated, but it must be provided for.
So the gracious forgiveness of God, the very dealings of God, and the verse that would come to mind that would emphasize this from the New Testament is Ephesians chapter 6, verse 4, fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
That is, in just the same way that the Lord himself nurtures us, trains us, disciplines us, so we are to bring that into our parenting. And of course, the goal of this education, this training, this development is that the conscience of this developing child into adulthood will learn to live responsibly before God and have learned the art of self-discipline of his own being.
Now in contrast to that, we have the problem of a legalistic home, a legalistic Christian home. And I'm just going to throw out a few questions that would relate to either, this is for younger ones particularly, how strong is your relationship with your parents?
Do you still love to be with them? Or would you not be caught dead around them? You know, it's typical for the kindergarten child to want mommy or daddy to go with them that first day. It's a little different story when it's grade 9 or grade 10 or whatever your corresponding thing is, entering into high school.
But how strong is that relationship? How happy is it? Do you struggle to sort out what convictions are really yours? And I'm going to take you to another passage, maybe I should do it right now, in 2 Corinthians chapter 1.
This has become very significant to me in appreciating the importance of authority in relation to our faith. Second Corinthians chapter 1, it's in the context of Paul's relationship with the assembly at Corinth.
Verse 21 says,. Now he which establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us is God, who has also sealed us and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts. Moreover, I call God for a record or witness upon my soul that to spare you I came not as yet unto Corinth.
Now that sounds like a father, doesn't it? To spare you. And then he says in verse 24,. Not for that we have dominion over your faith, but are helpers of your joy, for by faith you stand. Now I want to take a few moments just to explain this.
Paul as an apostle had a tremendous authority. He had been the father in the faith to these believers. He had seen the assembly planted. If anyone had a right to assert an authority over the saints, to dominate them, to lord over them, it would be Paul to the assembly at Corinth.
But after the first epistle where he has spoken to them very solemnly, severely about sin in their midst, now in the second epistle he's trying to draw them, to draw them to himself. And as a father, he is saying, I haven't come yet to visit you in order to give you time to change.
You know, sometimes if we don't care about the people that we are dealing with, we can be very harsh, very unyielding, very rigid. We are to have the same kind of sympathetic, sincere concern as a father for a struggling son or daughter.
And Paul is taking that place. But even after saying that, he qualifies it by saying, verse 24, but not for that we have dominion over your faith. He says, I am not your Lord. I want to be beside you and be a helper who will strengthen you, who will bring you into the pathway of blessing so that we can joy together in the future.
I hope as parents, we also recognize while we may have little children at the moment, if you happen to have, it's not going to be very long. I can't believe how short the time was that our boys were in our home.
And now I look up to them. And I would like to be able to look into their eyes and them to look into my eyes and for them to be able to respect me as someone who has given to them the foundation for life, that I was a true representation of God as father to them, however they have responded to it.
And then he gives this little explanation at the end, for by faith you stand. What's so important about that? Well, very simply this. If you are only here today or in the assembly because of the pressure and the influence of someone else, that's not going to last.
And this is essential in young people growing up. It's essential in Christians developing to maturity to develop our own personal faith that we believe the principles of God, that we accept them as true, that we base our life upon it, that we have within ourselves a conviction of what is right, and then we act upon it because I believe it, not just this is what I've been taught, this is how we were raised, but I hardly know what it means or why.
So this is the development that is necessary. And the unfortunate thing is this. Legalism tends to stunt this. Legalism tends to prevent the necessary maturing of conscience, the necessary development of personal responsibility for life.
You see, whether it's a parent or whether it's in the assembly, if you're hanging on so tight to that rope and hanging on so they can't move, they're going to be starting to push or rather pull the opposite direction.
The harder you pull, the harder they pull until finally something lets go. And they're going to tend to go the opposite direction that you are. And legalism tends to keep people immature. If I was to define legalism, I would call it the shell of spirituality, the outward form of what may be godly, the attempt by rules to contain and prevent evil.
It's not carelessness towards God. It is faithfulness that has degenerated into formalism. And you've already heard today the danger of the external carrying on while the internal has deteriorated. And I should just give you one more verse in Luke chapter 11, which actually highlights this problem and points out the error of it.
Luke chapter 11, the Lord had so much to say negatively to the Pharisees and about the Pharisees. From verse 37 down, you have the Pharisee who invited him and was astonished that he didn't wash or bathe before dinner.
In verse 39, the Lord said unto him, now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and platter, but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness. Ye fools, did not he that made that which is without or outside make that which is within also?
But rather give alms of such things as you have. And behold, all things are clean unto you. But woe unto you Pharisees, for you tithe mint and rue and all manner of herbs and pass over judgment and the love of God.
These ought you to have done and not to leave the other undone. Now, I had always found verse 41 a little bit odd because verse 42 seems to credit them with being exceedingly scrupulous about tithing.
You know, every little bit of herb that they collect in their garden or whatever they grow, they're going to take that tithe and set it aside for the Lord, even down to those tiny little seeds. So why does he say in verse 41, but rather give alms of such things as you have?
Well, I'm just going to quote another translation that I was… someone mentioned this some time ago in the ESV. It gives it this way in verse 41. Give as alms those things that are within, and behold, all things are clean unto you.
Now, that changes the impact of it significantly. It's not just give your alms of your possessions and then everything will be clean to you. He is saying, I want you to be concerned, not just with what I have bestowed upon you financially, in possessions, in physical things.
I want you to appreciate what I have bestowed upon you spiritually. What you are as a person, those inner things. And he mentions love, justice. Other places he mentions mercy. You take the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians chapter 5 and put it in here.
And what is he saying? I want you to give alms of this. In other words, I have blessed you with a capacity to not only to know God, but to reproduce the life that is in God. And if you bless other people with love, with kindness, with justice, with compassion, you will be truly giving your alms.
You will be truly fulfilling goodness, rather than just scrupulously counting your pennies and making sure you're giving to the Lord his portion and that kind of thing. And so again, it gets to this emphasis.
It's what is within, the spiritual, that is of true value. And so the problem with legalism is that it emphasizes the external and does not deal with the internal. Now, carnal Christian homes, that's someone who's really careless about God's Word.
Someone who is still living according to the impulses of the flesh. And unfortunately, if a Christian family is characterized by this, the children are going to follow what they see in you, not what you say.
And so it will be, again, a destructive influence for truly appreciating the principles of God. An unsaved home, there's every possible range there. But God has designed family with an instinctive desire, an instinct to be protective from evil.
And so virtually any family will have some of that characteristic. When it comes to the assembly, it's really just an extension of all what I've been talking about. The assembly is meant to be a place where the very knowledge of God and the character of God is reinforced.
And we have this influence upon one another that we mold and express God's principles. The shepherding, the evangelizing, the teaching of the Word of God, all of these things should establish and reinforce the value of the Word of God.
Now, I don't think I have to tell you that we are now in a culture that is totally at odds with God and his principles. And so we are no longer in a culture where God is honored and the principles of God, the standards of righteousness that is in his Word are upheld and strengthened by our culture.
It is exactly the opposite. And the basic reason for that, apart from the corruption of sin within the human heart, has been overthrowing the Word of God as the basis of truth, ultimate truth, ultimate reality, and the replacing with evolutionary philosophy, which eliminates or removes God from the picture.
Now, I'm not going to spend any more time on that. It is very, very important. And I'm sure we're going through such a cultural revolution that it's creating a generation gap in every Christian family, between the parents, between the grandparents, and the parents and the children, because of the strong influence of the world in its teachings about truth, its teachings about, well, God is simply not there.
Now, I want to next look at diagnosis of my conscience. How can you evaluate the state of your own conscience? I want to just look at some of the conditions that are described in the New Testament. And I'm going to put them in pairs, in contrast, that will hopefully help you to see, highlight the significance by the contrast.
The first one is in 1 Timothy chapter 1, and I've already referred to a good conscience, but this is the first one, 1 Timothy chapter 1. And it's interesting that in 1 Timothy, three times, faith and conscience are linked together.
Faith and conscience. Faith is the foundation of our spiritual relationship to God. What we believe about God. Conscience is the foundation of our moral, our moral evaluation of life. And so faith relates to the spiritual realm, conscience relates to the moral realm.
And what is insisted on in 1 Timothy is that we must keep these together. Or each will have an effect upon the other. Now, let's notice what it says in 1 Timothy chapter 1. From verse 3 down, he's emphasizing that he left Timothy at Ephesus to challenge the introduction of any other doctrine.
And it says in verse 5, now the end of the commandment or this charge is charity or love out of a pure heart and of a good conscience and of faith unfamed. From which, and that refers to all three things, the pure heart, good conscience, and faith unfamed, from which some having swerved have turned aside unto vain jangling.
The end of the chapter relates again to verse 19, says holding faith and a good conscience, which some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck. I'll just give you the one over in chapter 3, mentioning a pure conscience concerning the deacons in the assembly.
Verse 9, holding the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience. So what is a good conscience? A good conscience, I would suggest, is a healthy, well-adjusted conscience that is able to approve of our behavior.
Able to approve our motives, of our attitudes. So having a good conscience is my conscience is at peace with what I am, what I am doing. The association of a good conscience with love and faith here shows that our conscience is critical.
To being able to live our life in a way that honors God, that fulfills the quality of life that is essential for us, which is love. The truth of God produces a kind of life, and that life is godliness.
And that godliness embraces the very life of God, which is love itself. But that love to be true, to be genuine, to be effective, must be produced in a pure heart. So we must have pure intentions, pure motivations within ourselves.
And our conscience is so vital to protecting that. And so, very simply, if you find within yourself a struggle with anything that you're thinking of, anything that's in your mind, in your thoughts, in your intentions, in your behavior, in your habits, you need to respond to your conscience to be kept in that purity, that singleness of heart from which love flows.
And included with that is a faith that is not hypocritical. There's no pretense. There is genuine and in sincerity. Now, in contrast to that, I'm going to take you to Hebrews chapter 10. We have reference made to an evil conscience.
And there's really an encouragement in the passage because it's possible for us to be cleansed from an evil conscience. Verse 22, the encouragement to draw near. Let us draw near with a true heart. There you get that purity of heart.
In full assurance of faith. Here's our faith that is true, sincere. It's assured. Having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Now, you can apply this to a daily responsibility.
I believe the true interpretation, and this is drawn from the language of the Levitical priesthood that was just after what we've been listening to, and the fact that God fitted those men to serve in his presence.
And this cleansing, our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, is the cleansing that took place when we were saved. And it's one of the most precious things in coming into relationship to God through salvation.
Is that all that consciousness that we have within our being, of our sins, can be cleansed. And it doesn't have to dominate our life. And it doesn't have to control our life. We can experience a wonderful cleansing from evil.
Now, I'm going to suggest to you here that this is not so much talking about our conscience being evil. But again, as I talked about the good conscience being how it's registering, this here, an evil conscience, would be our conscience is registering evil or sin against us.
And so it is really judging us as being sinful, being wrong in our thoughts and our attitudes and so on. Again, in 1 John chapter 1, and I don't have time to go to that now, but we have the provision for us as Christians, if we confess our sins, he is faithful to forgive us our sins, not just to forgive, but to cleanse.
And I hope each one of us know the difference within our own hearts, whether we are enjoying the Lord's presence with a cleansed heart, or whether we are defiled in his presence. So there you have a good conscience put in contrast to an evil conscience.
That's how it registers. But let's go to, I've already read in 1 Timothy, but let's go to Titus chapter 1. And here we have pure put in contrast to defiled. So I'm thinking now of a pure conscience in contrast to a defiled conscience.
Titus chapter 1 verse 15 says, unto the pure all things are pure, but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure, but even their mind and conscience is defiled. They profess that they know God, but in works they deny him, being abominable and disobedient and unto every good work reprobate.
Now let me just quote to you another verse from 2 Timothy chapter 1 and verse 3. And there Paul writing to Timothy again says, I thank God whom I serve from my forefathers with a pure conscience. That's quite a statement.
I thank God whom I serve from my forefathers with a pure conscience. This is a wonderful heritage that his parents were God fearing people who lived sincerely before God. They reverence God. Paul came from that heritage.
And possibly many of us who are here today have also had that important heritage of parents, of family that we have grown up in, who had that attitude towards God, of being genuine, sincere, God fearing, would fear to sin against God.
And Paul, even before he was saved, had a concern about his life before God. Now that's vital. And what I also want to emphasize is that Paul is speaking these things as an older Christian, a mature Christian.
And it shows us that we never outgrow the necessity of a good conscience or the importance of it to our spiritual life. So then here I'm going to suggest it's not so much what it's registering as good against bad, but now it's talking about the condition of the conscience, the condition of the conscience itself.
And in Titus chapter 1, where we have this expression, unto the pure, I found it interesting that the expression is literally, unto the purified. That would link with what we suggested from Hebrews 10.
We, though sinners, have experienced God purifying our souls. Let me read another verse, because sometimes when we connect them together, we see the value of them much more. First, Peter chapter 1, verse 22.
He says, seeing you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that you love one another with or out of a pure heart fervently, being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible by the word of God, and so on.
You see these principles that I've been just trying to relate together? They're all here again. But here there's an interesting thing in 1 Peter, is that we are credited in coming into salvation. We are credited with cooperating with God.
In that work of bringing us into this new life. Yes, it was a supernatural work of God, bringing us into a new birth. But he says, you purified your souls in obeying the truth. You see, as the conviction, and I know each of us had our own, you know, experience in salvation with its own particular emphasis.
But I would think it would be universal. We would all have experienced conviction of sin. And there was that repentance, that acknowledgement, that submitting to the truth that was being brought to us.
And he says, seeing that you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the power of the spirit unto a pure life. And that life is the life of love going out to others. So back in Titus then, he's talking to the purified ones who now are able to enjoy the blessings of God with a good conscience, with a pure conscience.
Now, what does it mean to the pure, all things are pure? Well, it might be easier to tell you what it doesn't mean. It doesn't mean that if you decide there's nothing wrong with it, well then there isn't anything wrong with it.
No matter what it is. Sin will never become pure. But what it is saying, in contrast to that legalistic system that imposed so many things that were unclean, unclean, unclean, now in the fullness of salvation in Christ, all that God has blessed us with, all that God has given to us of his creation, including, as 1 Timothy 4 emphasizes, foods.
I guess I don't have to talk about pork here. Aren't you glad you're not under that restriction? Marriage, 1 Timothy 4, it's pure. And God wants us to enjoy all the greatness of his goodness. Whether it's in relationships, if it is a holy, honorable relationship, according to his word, you can live in that relationship without any guilt, without any shame, with a pure conscience.
The contrast is this. And this is where the tragedy of a defiled conscience is. What is a defiled conscience? A defiled conscience happens when we violate our conscience. And even though it is warning us, we pursue and persist in the sin, our conscience becomes defiled.
And if we continue in that, we will eventually end up to this tragic condition where nothing in life is pure to us. All you have to do is listen to people. The things they make jokes about, they cannot appreciate purity.
And this is one of the tragedies of the sexual revolution, where with no restriction, people are engaging in all kinds of immoral relationships without responsibility, without accountability. It ultimately destroys their ability to appreciate and to enjoy a pure relationship.
And so the emphasis that comes all along with this, the tree of life is still the tree of life. The tree of knowledge of good and evil still brings death. It brings disappointment. It brings disillusionment.
It brings destruction of the very inner joy and peace and tranquility and purity that God has meant us to enjoy. And so that is the significance of that. Now, I'm going to link together two more pairs and hopefully I can...
I guess the time is almost gone, isn't it? In Acts 24 and 16, Paul speaks about... He says, Herein do I exercise myself to have always a conscience void of offense towards God and toward man. Again, as an older, mature Christian, he is emphasizing that this is a continual concern.
I'm putting that in contrast to Romans 14 and 22 and 23, where you have a condemning conscience. In that verse, it says, Happy is the man that condemns not himself in that which he allows. And I want to say very clearly, I am more worried about myself now than I was as a young Christian.
I feel that there is more danger. And for some reason, as we grow older, we have the danger of becoming more casual, more complacent about the presence of sin in our life. We have become used to God, used to his presence.
We've gotten used to functioning in his presence. We've lost the sensitivity. That's the danger of losing this true sensitivity to God and his presence, which would forbid sin gaining control or mastery of my life.
But as we go through life, you hear it all, you see it all, nothing shocks you anymore. And it's possible for us to become more dangerously vulnerable, to be overtaken by sin. And so this is very important for those of us who are older.
Herein, do I exercise myself. I concern myself continually to have always a conscience void of offense, first towards God, to never be offensive to God by what I'm thinking, by what I'm saying, by what I'm doing, and also to be concerned that I never bring harm to any other person.
This is what keeps us. This is what can prevent disaster and shipwreck. Now my time is gone. I trust that the Lord will help us to appreciate the conscience that he has given to us.