Weapons of our Warfare — Dean Taylor

Well, amen. All right, well, today, I would like to get a little personal into some details of the weapons of our warfare. And in particular, I would like to look at some of these weapons that we have, and one in particular I would look at is your conscience.

And looking at your conscience, I'm going to be looking at the way the scriptures instructs us to have our conscience corrected by the word of God, and also how we can defile that, and when we do this, it can bring destruction.

But when it's clear, the blessings of having a clear heaven are everything. And then also, the only way to have complete freedom from that is through the blood of Jesus Christ, and through salvation, that those things are, those sins are taken from us.

And I think if there's anything that we're gonna have for good weapons as soldiers of the Lord, it's this. And so, let's start with the word of prayer and ask the Holy Spirit, according to His promise, to work with us today, let's pray.

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, for the Holy Spirit, and we pray, oh God, Holy Spirit God, be with us today, and fulfill your word that you said that when you come, first of all, you said if anyone asked, anyone, that you would not refuse them.

We're asking here today. And you said that when you send your Holy Spirit, that you would convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment. So Lord, we're taking this time to do inventory, to see things that you want fixed, that you want to heal, you want to touch.

And so Lord, we hand it over to you, and ask your word to be proclaimed. Let God be true, and every man a liar, starting with me. And so God, I pray that you would be glorified, and your ways lifted up.

It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen. All right, so looking at this, a few reminders. One of the ones that stood out to me from the war tactics, and the one from the ancient art of war, is that if you know the enemy, and know yourself, you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.

God cannot change the person you're pretending to be. Today we're gonna get, trying to get honest, and get off all the facade, and allow the Holy Spirit to speak to who you truly are. And these masks that all of us keep wearing, I have to strip it off all the time.

We always want to try to put a best foot forward, but that creates a mask, and it creates a shell that the Holy Spirit can't get to. The other one, so when we look at the spiritual warfare, and the armor of God, I think again of our example of Israel when they were marching forward in a right way.

They were forgiven, they were faithful, they were holy, they were victorious, and they were untouchable by the demonic attacks of Satan. And yesterday we even talked about this beautiful promise that Brother Tim gave us a little bit, that if we come out from among them, come out from the things of this world, and he will be a father to us.

Therefore, having those promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourself from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. With all that, nothing of that can occur unless we start here, right where they started, and that journey, and remember when Balaam was trying to curse them, he looked at them and said this, he has not observed iniquity in Jacob, nor has he seen wickedness in Israel.

You remember that Israel sinned and made a lot of mistakes before that. But when they were cleansed, when they were clear, that's the image that Balaam got when he looked upon them. So today, if Balaam or some demonic cursing person was trying to look to your innermost soul, what would they see?

Is this what they see? It's available to you, this is available. Let's go and look at some of this. So as we look at the famous passages of the spiritual armor, you know the Ephesians five passage, let's turn to that, Ephesians five, verse 10.

So as the Apostle Paul is giving this instruction to the Ephesians, Ephesians five, verse 10. Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

I'm gonna touch on that word in a minute. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts, that's armies, of wickedness, spiritual armies of wickedness in the heavenly places.

Therefore take up the whole armor of God that you will be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand. He's not giving us the impression that we're living a life that's just free and easy and carefree and everything.

He's giving us the idea that there's an entire army of demonic attack coming against us and he's wanting us to have that kind of attitude in our way of following him, following Christ. So then he goes on, he says this.

Stand therefore, he keeps talking, stand. Having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace, above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all, notice all the fiery darts of the wicked, of the wicked one and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit which is the word of God, praying always in all prayer and supplication in the spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints.

That's really packed, isn't it? It's really packed with the attitude of how we are to stand and he keeps emphasizing this is the recipe of how we are to stand and not to fail. One of kind of an archaic word in all that had description is the word, I think, wiles.

What are wiles of the devil? What's the word wiles mean? It's sort of an archaic word. Wiles are tricks or manipulations designed to deceive someone. So in other words, he's letting us know that not only does Satan have these armies of demonic attacks on you, but he's actually set up little tricks, little snares that you kind of accidentally fall into and that's a very scary thing.

It's scary for me standing here today. It's a scary thing. It's meant to give a caution and a fear to us, but he's given us the confidence to remember the word of God, all the attacks, all the wiles of the devil are able to be defeated when we're walking in the way he's telling us to walk.

So what's a way that we can twist up the concept of grace? I think one of the snares that we have in the, one of the snares that Satan throws at the people of God is just to confuse us. Remember the idea of yesterday with the war tactics.

Take their information and twist the meaning. Grace is one of those. Now we're saved by grace. I'm gonna show you that verse. There's nothing we can do to boast, but that grace is something that gives power to us and it changes our life or it's not real.

So do not be deceived. Listen to this passage and ponder it to the way that Satan will wanna give us and deceive and belittle and I don't know, reduce the power of that powerful word grace. First Corinthians 6 .9 warns us, do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?

That's, I mean, do you get it, Corinthians? Don't be deceived. Neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers nor homosexuals nor sodomites nor thieves nor covetous nor drunkards nor revilers nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.

I think that's scary. I mean, covetousness is in there. You know, that's meant to bring us fear in a right way and then he gives us this amazing part. And such were some of you, but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of God.

That's amazing, praise God. It's God's grace and his doing that takes us out of all of those things that all of us were and takes us and makes us powerful, sanctified people of God. It's amazing. In Ephesians, he tells us in probably one of the most remarkable passages in the New Testament, this again, this amazing gift of both our life and of a sinner and the treasure that we're given with grace.

Listen to this passage in Ephesians chapter two. And you, he made alive who were dead in trespasses and sins. Get this point, dead, absolutely dead in trespasses and sins. That means whoever you are today, completely dead in trespasses and sins, that's the person that he wants to come and say.

In which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath just as the others.

Very important. He's letting us know that all of us, every one of us were debased in our minds, that we were being led by these passions and by these lusts, and that's the carnal mind. That's the carnal person.

And just like everyone else, all that we were that way. But then he goes on, and he goes on with an amazing statement. But God, dead in trespasses and sins, dead and lost to the worlds of lust and passion, but God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together in Christ.

By grace, you have been saved. And raised us up together and made us, made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come, he might show the exceeding riches of his grace and his kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.

Again, he repeats it. For by grace, you have been saved through faith. And that, that means that faith, is not of yourselves. It is the gift of God. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. That's the Christian life. God takes you, lost and dead in sin, saves you by the blood of Jesus Christ, enters you, and puts you to work in the kingdom of God.

It's amazing. But we weren't the ways of the world anymore. We have been changed, or have you? That's the seriousness that you need to take with these things, with these passages. You know, we, I think of the things that we look at Christianity.

We can get in so much trapped into legalism or lawlessness and back and forth. And there's so many things that's typical in all of us. It's not just your generation. It's my generation, maybe even more.

And when you're looking at things of holiness, or, you know, yesterday when we were talking about come up from among them, and you maybe brought up some different topics and everything. One of the things that frequently comes up is, well, is it a sin?

Is that a sin? I mean, is it a sin to do this? Is it a sin to do that? And I think of the passage frequently. All things are lawful, but not all things edify. And if there's something that's maybe even okay, but if it's weighing you down, then that's a problem.

Look at this passage in Hebrews chapter 12, verse one. It's really important that you make the distinguishing, catch the point that the apostle, that the writer is saying here. Hebrews 12, one. Therefore, oh, one thing before I read it.

I want you to notice the we and the ours I underlined. We're in this together, and we need each other, and we need those who went on before us. So let's read that, Hebrews 12, verse one. Therefore, we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.

I remember when my dear wife was in basic training. I should have brought a picture of that. I'll try to show you, but she was something. She, don't let her fool you with that small thing. She learned how to do claymore mines, and she's a scored expert on grenade throwing, and also was able to shoot an M16 machine gun.

Don't let Tanya fool you, but she tells a story that when she was running on the rifle range once, so you have these camouflaged things with pockets here, and in this pocket, she had an entire full canteen of water, and in this one, a poncho all folded up, and they were running and everything, and she said, I was just feeling so tired.

I couldn't keep up. Usually, she was actually at the lead of the running. She was with the fast guys in her run, but now she was behind and everything, and she went, oh, I'm weighted down. She took out her canteen and took out her poncho, and then she beat all the fast guys again, but this is an example.

When we're running with baggage, that could be spiritual baggage, like what Brother Tim was helping us to try to get rid of this morning, or it's also usually probably what the writer of Hebrew is specifically talking about things is the things that maybe aren't necessarily sin, but they're weights.

They're getting you. They're defeating you, and they're preventing you from running the race that's set before you. I talked about in the previous messages in all of human history, the idea is just keep the masses content with bread and circuses.

Give them enough bread and circuses, and they'll never revolt. The whole mass world is very bent. They have to keep the mass majority of the world content with a little enough entertainment and a little enough food, that once we lose the entertainment or lose the food, people start to riot.

We saw that a few years ago, and so you gotta keep the masses pacified. That's what's out there. It's been out there since ancient Roman times, and you can get weighed down by all of these little amusements.

Maybe none of them are a particular sin in and of itself, but just walking through all that just brings you down, and I brought these slides the other day. There's so much more right around the horizon of different ways for us just to be entertained and lost in a world.

Amusement, bread, and circuses. I look at this passage in that thought, and it speaks specifically of, well, let me just read it to you. Ephesians 5, 15. Again, this idea of the spiritual soldier, and in that context, the apostle Paul is letting us know the attitude that's gonna give you victory on the way, and he says this.

See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time because the days are evil. Therefore, do not be unwise, but understand that the will of the Lord is, and do not be drunk with wine in which is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit.

He goes on about praising and singing hymns in praise to the Lord. Not just the alcohol that I mentioned there, but what I get the attitude is just a basically buzzed, dizzy life of carelessness. Circumspective means like you're drawing a circle.

So you're walking, and you're looking around you is the attitude the apostle Paul is giving us. So when I'm in this place, I'm kind of looking, and I'm paying attention along the way, circumspectly, and I'm not just like a fool that's oh, oh, you know, all right, and you're just getting distracted by everything.

And those are the things that I think is what Paul is giving to us. And so just having that attitude is very scriptural. This is the attitude of a victorious soldier. So I'm gonna hit particularly, because I think it's one of the, I think it's always been a temptation, but particularly with us, with all the availability of our media, I'm gonna look at some of these visual sins in the way that God, I mean, excuse me, the way that Satan gets to us.

Okay, why is visual defilement so bad? You know, actually, as they dug up ancient ruins like in Pompeii and different things, visual things have been real bad for a long time, you know, thousands of years.

But now Satan has come up with crafty, different ways to get that to us in quiet. And usually, at least from 50 years ago, if you wanted some of the real bad stuff, you had to go out somewhat in public to get ahold of it.

Now that's kind of changing, and it's becoming much more easy. But let's look at what Jesus said and why some of these things are, how they stick to us, how they weigh us down in such a terrible way, how they tear down churches, take down institutions.

Visual defilement. Luke says in Luke 11, 33, the lamp of the body is the eye. Therefore, when your eye is good, your whole body also is full of light. But when your eye is bad, your body also is full of darkness.

Therefore, take heed that the light which is, the light which is in you is not darkness. If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, the whole body will be full of light as when the bright shining of a lamp gives you light.

So what you look on all the time does, Jesus is telling us, has an effect on your entire body. It's just a fact that he's giving to us, and he's letting us know. And Jesus took these visual sins very seriously.

I'm gonna read to you the one from the Sermon on the Mount about lust and that type of a thing. He's very serious. He's talking about, he goes to the heart in excavation. He talks about amputation, taking it so seriously.

And he talks about forming, formation of a proper fear of God. But let's look at this passage. Sermon on the Mount stuff, Jesus teaching, taking it very seriously, this weight that typically gets us down.

Matthew 5, 27. You have heard that it has been, you've heard that it was said in those of old, you shall not commit adultery, right? It's important, you should not commit adultery. But I say to you that whosoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

And I think it works the other way for you young ladies too. If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you. For it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish than your whole body be cast into hell.

And so this idea, he takes it very seriously. Now I think he is making a metaphor because if you pluck out one eye, you can still sin with the other eye. But he's saying that you need to take, here's the point that I get out of this.

You need to be able to take physical, drastic measures to deal with this sin. In other words, if your iPhone offends thee, pluck it out. So you need to be able to say, quit saying, oh, I'm strong, I'm spiritual.

And if you're failing, you're failing. And you need to do something with it. When I talk to students sometimes, some of them will say, they look at the people who make straight A's and they go, wow, I just wish I could make straight A's.

And I was with a student once and I was talking with them. And there was another straight A student who was going through all his flash cards and everything just while he was sitting there the whole time.

And I said, why are those students like that so stupid that they have to study all the time? And I was being sarcastic, I was being facetious. The point is, that's the ones that make the A's. And it's taking that seriousness.

So we look at, oh, this guy had to have a flip phone. Well, he must have some problems. No, he's taking it very seriously. Or this lady is in an accountability group. Or this person is doing something.

They're taking their life seriously. And not just flapping around. It's those are the people that are gonna make the difference. Now, I will say this as a disclaimer. I think that there are mistakes when fighting sin.

You can have a hyper asceticism, a hyper legalism, if you would, that is dangerous. I have seen in this, well, I have seen two people that I know suffer castration over misinterpretation of Matthew five.

And let me just give you, tell you something, it doesn't work, because if you take male hormones after that, it doesn't even fix the problem, all right? But, true, I've seen people get so messed up that they're literally hurting themselves and things.

This happens with girls a lot. You come under a lot of condemnation and you're hurting yourself and hitting yourself. It's wrong, it's devilish, it's not the way. Another way I see mistakes is what I call a hyper-pietism.

This one, oh, this one gets us all the time. This one is, I'm spiritual, I know I am. I don't need all that stuff. It's the one who doesn't need to do the extra study or the extra measures. And I'm not gonna think of myself as that person who needs those kind of a thing, so I'm hyper-spiritual.

I came through with this last year. That's not me anymore. And we can get ourselves sometimes in trouble. And of course, the other big mistake is just lawlessness, is that the satanic lie of, well, God doesn't even see my outside.

This didn't matter. He didn't see me that way, and you just go on living in this kind of lie. Another lie, another abuse of grace. As Bonhoeffer called it, cheap grace. So, let's just go ahead and dive right in there.

Are sexual sins any worse than other sins? I mean, there's gluttony was talked about, covetousness was talked about, all these different things were talked about. Is this really any worse? But here's the thing that I will say out of both pastoral and parent and personal particular, sexual sins will mess you up.

They will scar your life. And I'm sorry, the answer is yes. They are worse. It's funny, in Corinthians, or Thessalonians, 1 Thessalonians, excuse me, 4 .3, Paul put, for this is the will of God, your sanctification, this is the will of God.

What's the will of God, Lord? This is the will of God, your sanctification, that you should abstain from sexual immorality, that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in passions of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God.

1 Corinthians 8 puts it this way, flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?

A lot of commentators argue on this. There's an ancient one, Chrysostom, who tries to make an analogy of what's Paul saying there? And he's saying it's like, this is the sins that actually make you feel like you just wanna go take a bath.

It's just filthiness of your entire body. And understand, we read different things that you will not inherit the kingdom of God, covetousness and gluttonous or whatever. But you know, gluttony's a sin, don't get me wrong.

And we need to not go, you know, just forget about it. But I've never once, in a back room of counseling or something, heard somebody come up to me and said, Brother Dean, when I was nine, my parents took me to Shady Maple, and I'm still scarred over it.

You know, I haven't. It's wrong, following into gluttony can be a problem. I'm not making light of that, but I wanna put it into perspective. But these sins mess up people for life. It takes down churches.

It takes down institutions. So we just need to learn that as this one comes on as strong we're gonna defeat it. And we're gonna defeat it with the power of the Holy Spirit, with the body of Christ, with the people of God.

Why does it stick so much to us? What is it? You know, I think sexual sins corrupt the gifts that God gave us. There are certain emotions and certain dear things to us that these sins mimic. Like, for instance, in Proverbs 5 .18, it says, Rejoice in the wife of your youth.

Be intoxicated always in her love, but do not get drunk on the embrace of a forbidden woman. See the line there that he draws. There's these emotions in both single and married life, the love, the passion, a love of God even.

And all those things are deep, deep emotions. I'm gonna show you just a little biology lesson here to show you a little bit of what I mean. Okay, this is something that's built into the human. We have this thing in our brain called the limbic system.

This is the place in your brain where all the emotions play. As a matter of fact, when all the signals come in, they come through the spinal cord, they hit the limbic system, and then they make it to the frontal cortex and all those types of things.

But your emotions play in this area, this deep place in your mind. And it's more than, you can't even express this. For instance, somebody asks you, Dean, could you explain how much you love your wife?

You can hardly even say it, you know. Because it's before language. It's deep, you know what I mean. And so these types of things play on us, and we've gotta be careful because Satan uses this to get to us.

Now, God gave us some chemicals, the way that works out. Dopamine, endorphin, oxytocin, and serotonin are chemicals that are all messing in hormones that are messing in and working with all these beautiful things that God gave us, and they all do something a little different.

Dopamine is the reward chemical, completing a task, doing self-care things, eating food, checking a WhatsApp message. They put a little dopamine hit for that, and it feels good. Scrolling, scrolling can leave us in this, or we can live in the serotonin, meditating and running or accomplishment.

Somebody liked my post, bing, a little serotonin hit. Oxytocin, this is released when you have babies, and it makes this love hormone, this care and concern, holding hands, hugging, giving a compliment, oxytocin.

And then endorphin, endorphin is the natural painkiller. When I give morphine in anesthesia, if you don't have a pain, unless say we're replacing your hip or something, when I'm giving a morphine to those people, it just deals with the pain.

But if I give morphine to someone who's not undergoing those kind of surgeries, that morphine just saturates them and gives them all this intoxication, and they become addicted to it. Your body makes this stuff, and different things release that as a response to pain.

Some people get in the habit of actually causing trouble. In churches, or in your home, or in rebellion, or getting mad, or hitting yourself. And that releases these types of things in a very satanic way.

Visionaries, we have to watch out for just the drive for something, and these kind of hormones that Satan can use to confuse us. So, what are ways that Satan uses these things as drugs to us? So you're going about your life, things aren't working out, this guy that you thought it was gonna work out didn't work out, this job that you were wanting didn't work out, and you're starting to feel depressed and feeling like my life is going nowhere, and you go back to your drug of choice.

And Satan wants to be there to offer it to you. Pornography is probably one of the worst. You have actually pictures they have of brains on pornography and on heroin, and seeing the same places of the brain light up.

I should have brought a picture of that. Outbursts of wrath are one. Eating, it's one I typically go to. When I get depressed, I start eating. And it's, I have to realize, okay, Dean, I'm using this as a drug, it's wrong.

Shopping, you know, Amazon is a little too easy these days. Risky behavior, driving and alcohol does this. Your cell phone's in a myriad of ways. Movies, you get lost in the movies of all the adventure and all the romance and all the things, and Satan is just playing through this, through these hormones, complaining, gossip.

This passage here just makes me tremble in this modern age. It's about the widows that Paul is talking about, but I take it to me. But she who lives in pleasure is dead while she lives. I wonder, what was Paul even thinking of these Corinthian, or what's that, Timothy, those ladies?

How much pleasure were they living in? Compared to my life, it's a scary thought. But so here's the thing. Your brain, and this is the part you gotta get. Your brain has trouble telling the difference between what is real and what is imagined, so it produces these hormones.

So you're watching the movies and the pornography, and this is hitting, and oh, I feel so loved. I feel so accepted. I've got endorphins, or whatever this thing may be, and Satan uses this as this cycle of sin that goes through and entraps you in a snare, and it uses this very God-given, beautiful hormones that God has given to us, and it's a trap.

Negativity. There's a recent research, and I checked it out. It's not just a hoopla. It's a literal research that's done. It's a Stanford University that they found that being critical actually shrinks your hippocampus.

Constant complaining in critical nature destroys your brain, and it's the same place that gets messed up for Alzheimer's disease. Complaining. Gratitude, on the other hand, brings all this serotonin and the good things, and for us, we know the praise of God and his redemption, and when you're getting into these temptations, when you're getting into the cycle that's gonna bring you to sin, praising God can lift you out of that, the joy of praising and that type of a thing.

All right, so let's look at one of these, how God works with our conscience. Conscience is a big tool that God has given to us. There's a story of Aventia Airlines that crashed in 1984. It was not an English speaker, probably Hispanic speakers that were there, and they were, in 1984, they were coming into one of these big valleys, and as they were coming, it was foggy, they couldn't see where they were going, and they were looking at their instruments, and after this crash, true story, I looked it up, after the crash, they had a, they looked at the black box, and they looked at what was being said by the pilot right before he crashed, and what they found is that the automatic warning system of the airplane kept saying, pull up, pull up, pull up, and they have on record the pilot saying, he said, shut up, gringo, and turned off the automatic warning signal and crashed into the mountain and died, and so did, I don't know, maybe all of them or several of them in the plane.

This is what we can do to our conscience. Pull up, stop, do something different, and those things, and if we take that and mess with that, it's gonna mess you up. So what is the conscience? You see, it's not the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit and the word of God instructs the conscience but conscience is given to something both in the world and it's something that's built into the natural person. If you would, let's consider the conscience, it's not, but let's consider it like another little piece of the brain that needs to be exercised properly and to be instructed by the word of God and by the Holy Spirit, and so this is what I mean by this.

Your conscience needs to be trained by the Holy Spirit and the word of God. This is important. Acting according to conscience may sometimes be sin. People in religious superstitions, walking in different things, they actually, they fill a conscience to do these things but that actually can be sin.

If the conscience is misinformed, then we seek the reasons for this misinformation. We need to ask, is it misinformed because the person has been neglecting the study of the word of God? And I'll back this up with some scripture.

Look at this passage. Hebrew five says, for though by this time, you ought to be teachers. You need someone to teach you against the first, again, the first principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food.

For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is those who by reason of us have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

You need to exercise this part of who you are with the word of God, with the word of God. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2 .11, who knows what is in man but the spirit of the man? In Romans, when he's speaking of the pagan Gentile culture, in Romans 2 .14, he brings it a very clear understanding of the conscience here.

He said, for when Gentiles who do not have the law by nature do the things in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law to themselves who show the work of the law written in their hearts, watch, their conscience, also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them.

This is something natural. This is something non-saved people have, it's natural. Paul clarifies also it's not actually the Holy Spirit but the Holy Spirit needs to instruct your conscience, the word of God.

You may be excusing yourself for your sin. You may be excusing yourself for the movies you're watching or the things you're doing or whatever, the covetousness or whatever. The Holy Spirit instructs your conscience in a proper way.

Paul says this. He says, I care very little, 1 Corinthians 4 .3, I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court. Indeed, I do not even judge myself. My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent.

It is the Lord who judges me, therefore judge nothing before the appointed time. Wait until the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of the heart. At that time, each will receive their praise from God.

That's the way that we should be able to have. But notice he makes the distinguishing point. Did you catch it? His conscience is clear, and he talks a lot about the conscience and about the conscience of others and all this type of thing, but that even of itself is not what he will be judged by.

He's judged by the Lord, but his conscience is directed by the Lord. So, the conscience, how and which ways can the conscience be messed up? This is a picture of an iron. Do you see that? It's like a blacksmith, and the idea is you take this hot iron the scriptures are giving, and if you take a nerve and you sear it, well, you no longer feel that.

And we do this in medicine all the time. You know, you have a pain or something, and you sear that, you no longer feel the pain. Through the Holy Spirit and through the conscience, there's things that God is using to wake us up.

Pull up, pull up. You're about to hit a cliff. And he gives us things, but if we sear that, it can really destroy us. But here's the scary thing. Both legalism and lawlessness can sear your conscience.

Both. Legalism can sear it, and licentiousness, lawlessness can sear it. You've gotta have the word of God to instruct you what it is that you're walking. Let me give you an example of each, one of each.

Of lawlessness, in Romans 1, 21. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God, nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

He goes on, he says, to the pure, and this is in, excuse me, not goes on, but this is now in Titus 1, 15. To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure, but even their mind and conscience are defiled.