Good evening. I did in a good way. I'll tell you about it after. That's okay. Welcome to Freedom At Last. For those who are live streaming, we are changing things up. We have really mainly the preaching that's going to be happening over the live stream and that'll begin pretty soon. We will play a video from Dr. Berg And then we're going to be offering the sharing time, the small group for anyone who is interested. I know one of the sisters who helps facilitate the ladies group, she reached out to ladies and, and there were no ladies interested in it for, uh, for today. It is, uh, January 1st, the new year's day. So for some there. They're out doing this or that, hopefully good things. But we do want to be able to offer groups for whoever would benefit from it, whoever's willing. So if you are listening to this and after the preaching you would like to be zoomed in on a group, You can join those here who are going to be having a group. We do have a very small amount of people here who cannot Zoom, or it would just be incredibly impractical for them to do that. So we will be having a small group here. I was talking to somebody as we began the live stream. That explains that. So there are a remnant of us here. But you can join in through Zoom if you so please. We hope to have things back to normal, not next week, but the week after. So the 10th Lighthouse is going to be gathering at the Trinity Christian Reformed Church building. That is at least our expectation. We're going to make sure everyone's updated on what that actually looks like. But that is what Trinity has told us. And then from that Sunday onward, we're going to have physical meetings again. So midweek service, prayer meeting, Christianity Explored in particular, we'll be doing that at the Lighthouse Building. Freedom That Lasts on Friday nights, we will be doing that here at the Lighthouse Building. So one more week of Zoom and oddities like that. So let's look to the Lord. Let's ask him to bless our time, bless the teaching from God's word and the preaching of it as well. Father in heaven, we thank you for this opportunity to hear from you through your Holy Spirit, who carried holy men of old to write down the things that you wanted them to write. not of any private interpretation, not of anything from their own minds, ultimately, but from your own self, you guided your apostles and the writers of scripture, your prophets, to put down exactly what you knew we would need, even now today, on 2021. We are thankful that your word is settled in heaven forever. Though the grass withers and the flower fades, the Word of God remains, it abides forever. And we are in desperate need of your Word, O God. So do use the preaching and the teaching of your Word to powerfully transform us, to make us more into the image of Jesus Christ, your Son, to turn our hearts away from wicked desires, and lusts after the things of this world, but renew our minds and help us to pursue that which is good and pleasing in your sight. And we'll be for our joy. But if there's anyone listening who has not yet saved, they have not yet been born again by your spirit, then they will not want these things truly. They will want a worldly substitute, but they will not want holiness. And so, Lord, we do pray you would burn in the hearts of those who are not yet saved and give them a true understanding of their need of Christ, not just of sobriety, but of Christ and regeneration and their citizenship in heaven, in your kingdom, Lord. Use this by the preaching of your cross. It is only by your shed blood, Lord Jesus, that we can approach the throne of the Father, that we can have fellowship with God. We thank you, Lord Jesus, that even though you knew no sin, you became sin for us, so that in you we would become the righteousness of God. we would be made completely cleansed and forgiven and righteous in your sight. So with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience, may we now come boldly before your throne. We ask this all in your name, Lord Jesus. Amen. We're gonna hear from Dr. Jim Berg through the teaching from the Freedom That Lasts curriculum. In a moment. Welcome back to free in the lab. If this is your first meeting with us, we are grateful that God brought you here. Your Freedom of Last program director and staff are ready to assist you in your journey to freedom from your life-dominating sins in Southern Heaven. You are among people who care about you. They will pray for you, and they will be glad to assist you in any way they can. Your fellow students in the class will welcome you and will rejoice with you in your victories, and they will encourage you along the way. Make sure you attend this class every week. Do the daily work in the student manual and the spiritual life journal, and attend the services of a Bible-preaching and teaching church every week. These are important components in this program. If you are new, you may feel like you are coming into the program in the middle of this video series and in the middle of your class lectures. Well, don't let that bother you. These video sessions and the regular teaching sessions will start over again in a few weeks. If you keep attending the class, you will get the whole cycle. We are really glad you are here. And we're glad that the rest of you are back. Your faithfulness in coming to these weekly meetings, in doing the work in your student manual and spiritual life journal, and in attending the services of your church will go a long way in helping you develop the character of Jesus Christ. As you know, He is the only source of freedom and advice. And that brings out today's topic. I mentioned the word faithfulness. This is an important component of the character of Jesus. The Apostle Peter captures that when he says, we are to add endurance. Let's review where we have been to find out where endurance fits in our growth in Christlikeness. If you recall, the foundation of Christlikeness, that is, of Christian character, is made up of three things, saving faith, virtue, which is a commitment to develop and display the character of Jesus, and knowledge, the knowledge of the person and the words and the ways of Jesus. Resting upon that foundation is self-control, that is, instantly obeying God's Word and the power of God's Spirit. And now, endurance. Endurance is simply continuing to obey God's Word and the power of God's Spirit, no matter what. It is grown-up self-control. It is self-control that remains faithful to doing right, even when the pressure is on. The difference between self-control and endurance is the difference between a 50-yard dash and a 5K marathon. Both involve running. Both require some serious practice. But the 5K run requires endurance. You have to keep on running for a longer period of time. Jesus had endurance. The common people loved his teaching and loved to watch him work miracles. He was actually quite popular with them. that he had enemies. The religious leaders did not like him because he told the truth about them and about their false teachings. And the more he taught what was right, and the more the common people followed him, the more angry the religious leaders got. They began to oppose him and tried to trap him with hard questions. Eventually, they began to plan how they could kill him. Jesus knew that he was sent to earth by his father to obey all the rules his father had given to men. After having perfectly kept all of his father's rules for men, he qualified as a perfect sacrifice to pay the death penalty for every sinner on earth by his death on the cross. Though he was perfect, he became in his father's eyes on the cross a super sinner. who took upon Him the sins of the whole world. This was the hardest thing Jesus had ever done. The Bible says, for God made Jesus to be sin for us, whom you know sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. But Jesus didn't turn away from doing the hard thing. He didn't run from the Father's plan for him. He didn't cave in because the opposition from others was great. The Bible says in Hebrews 12, 2, that Jesus endured the cross. He continued to obey his Father's words and the power of the Spirit no matter what. In fact, Hebrews 12-3 tells us to think about what Jesus endured, lest we be weary and faint in our minds. When we think about how much He suffered for us to pay the penalty for our sins because He loves us, we are motivated to endure in the things He commands us to do. So, how can you develop this endurance? Well, first, as you might suspect if you've been with us very long, you need to keep working on the virtues that form the foundation for endurance on the character column. They provide the staying power you need. Secondly, it is important to eliminate the negative influences in your life that would pull you away from doing the right thing. Many people can stop using a drug or pornography or can stop the destructive cutting or the cynical eating practices for a few days. But if they don't get away from the negative influences and do not build the godly habits of daily Bible reading, church attending, accountability with spiritual mentors and prayer, they cannot continue in their resolve to do right. When the pressure comes, they cave in. Running for the long haul requires practice. Being right here in this class every week is one of the habits you need to develop if you're to have endurance. Here, your coaches and fellow runners will encourage you in your race. They're the ones standing by the side of the road while you run, cheering you on and handing you a water bottle to keep you refreshed as you run. In fact, Hebrews 12-1 tells us to run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith. You must stay in the race no matter what. The victory over your life-dominating sins and your stubborn habits is worth it. The encouragement you will be to others is worth it. The smile of Jesus who runs beside you is worth it. One of the reasons it is important for you to be reading your Bible regularly and coming to this class regularly is that you will hear the stories of others who have faced hard things and have not given up. Their testimonies will encourage you to keep on keeping on. The Bible is filled with wonderful accounts of real men and women who continue to do the right thing no matter what. The Bible tells us of Moses. who led the children of Israel through some very tough times. They faced wars with neighboring enemies. They faced drought and famine. They faced strife and contention among themselves. There were even several times when the people turned on Moses himself, once they even started to kill him because they were so upset about all the hardships. As long as Moses believed and obeyed God's words and the power of God's Spirit no matter what, He was able to endure. Joseph is another man of the Bible who endured much. He was sold into slavery by his envious brothers. And while in slavery, he was falsely accused of attempted rape and thrown into prison. He faced many temptations and trials at the hands of very wicked people. Yet he never gave up. He never gave in to the temptations to be vengeful or immoral. He continued to obey God's Word in the power of God's Spirit no matter what. Joseph endured. Many others in the Old Testament and Bible, people like David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the rest of the prophets endured many hard things at the hands of people who did not love God. They were persecuted and tempted, but as long as they continued to obey God's words and the power of God's Spirit no matter what, they endured. And the same is true for the Apostles and other Christians in the New Testament. The Apostle Paul was stoned and left for dead. He was beaten and imprisoned. He was ridiculed and he was lied about, and he was finally sentenced to die because he taught what was right. In fact, all of the disciples of Jesus were persecuted during their lifetimes of ministry for Jesus, and most of them were martyred for doing the right thing. And even in the face of that, they endured. They continued to obey God's words and the power of God's Spirit no matter what. Did you know that God wrote all of those testimonies in the Bible for your encouragement? God intends for their stories of endurance to help you endure. This is one of the reasons it is important for you to read your Bible and do your assignments in the student manual. That is why it is important for you to be in church regularly so that you can hear the preaching and teaching about these men and women. God intends to encourage you through these accounts. You know, you may be so used to failure. that you can't even imagine yourself enduring no matter what. That will change if you will be faithful to this class and its assignments. God will develop in you the character of his son Jesus, the kind of character that continues to obey God's word and the power of God's spirit no matter what. So don't give up. Stay with the program. Keep running the race. Keep looking to Jesus, the one who endured a cross for you. He wants to give you victory for the long haul. May God bless you as you learn to continue to obey God's Word in the power of God's Spirit, no matter what. Amen. That is on, yes. Hopefully that's been on. Well, part of endurance is a matter that I want to continue talking about from the scriptures. It's a matter of the conscience. So if you were at the church service, Lighthouse Church Service last Lord's Day, You'd remember this topic being preached on. I have more to say. Really, the scriptures have much more to say. So the things that couldn't be preached on past Sunday, I really just took those and kind of reformatted it. And we want to have a part two message on gaining and maintaining a good conscience. So there's going to be a little bit of overview. and to really just kind of set up the fundamental things that were preached on last Sunday, but also some additional applications. So why don't we ask the Lord to bless the preaching of his word. Oh Lord, we do thank you for your holy word and all that it says about the conscience and how if we gain and maintain a good conscience, This will help us to endure. This will help us to continue obeying your word immediately in the power of your spirit, no matter what. And so I pray that you would use your truth to that end, that we would endure. For those listening who have not yet started the race, that they would cry out to Jesus and truly begin. But Lord, we do thank you that we could trust your word is sufficient to give us everything we need individually. So do minister to us how you see best. For Jesus' sake we pray, amen. If you can turn to Jeremiah chapter 36. Last Sunday I gave the tragic illustration of King Saul a man who did not heed his conscience, and he ultimately was destroyed for that. But there are unfortunately many other examples of men who did not gain or maintain a good conscience. And to kind of help set the message up tonight, King Jehoiakim is gonna be our example. I won't read the whole chapter here, But to give some context, the prophet Jeremiah gave the word of the Lord and his writer, his amanuensis, the technical term is, but really the guy who wrote down the words that Jeremiah received from God, Baruch. He brought it out into the city, and he read the word of the Lord that Jeremiah preached. And some government officials of Judah, they heard this, and they were concerned. This was a prophecy of doom. This was a prophecy of judgment, that if Judah would not repent, God was going to send Babylon to take them all away, just as he had promised through Moses, if they would continue in idolatry and stubbornness. Well, the officials are concerned about this coming. And so they say the king needs to hear this. So they bring the letter to the king, Jehoiakim, Judah's king at the time. And let's see what happens there in verse 22. It was the ninth month and the king was sitting in the winter house and there was a fire burning in the fire pot before him. As Jehudi read three or four columns, he's reading the prophecy of Jeremiah, the king would cut them off with a knife and throw them into the fire, in the fire pot, until the entire scroll was consumed in the fire that was in the fire pot. Yet neither the king nor any of his servants who heard all these words was afraid, nor did they tear their garments. So earlier in the chapter, these Judean officials did tear their garments, if my memory serves me correctly. They were deeply grieved about this call to repent. This is in Jeremiah 36. And yet we have here the king and his officials, his servants. These ones closest to him, they were not afraid. They did not tear their garments. He casually cuts God's word and throws it into the fire. Even when Elnathan and Deliah and Gemariah urged the king not to burn the scroll, he would not listen to them. It goes on to say that instead he wanted Baruch and Jeremiah arrested. This was a man with a seared conscience, 1 Timothy 4.2. That kind of conscience which is deadened as with a branding iron. He could very casually destroy God's word, not grieved at it one bit. If you flip over to the next several chapters, You know, we won't actually go through any of the examples. But you have another king in the next several chapters. I'd encourage you to read this on your own time. This king came after Jehoiakim, really two kings after, much closer to Nebuchadnezzar and Babylon's coming, Zedekiah. And through these chapters, you see this man tremble at God's word. He is concerned about what Jeremiah is saying, and yet he never listens to his conscience and truly submits to God. So as the other officials put Jeremiah in a big, dirty old well with mud at the bottom, they throw him in there. He says, I'm not gonna interfere with this. Let Jeremiah go in. He's scared of the people. Here's Jeremiah preaching judgment from Babylon and everyone else is saying, look at this guy, he's a treasonous man. He's gonna demoralize all of our soldiers. You gotta shut him up. Let's kill him. Let's put him in this well. And Zedekiah lets it happen. Even though you read these accounts, there's this concern he has about God's word. He privately meets with Jeremiah and wants to hear what is God saying. but he never trusts God. He never listens to what God is saying through Jeremiah. Even though Jeremiah explicitly says, if you do not turn yourself into Babylon, you will die. Yet Zedekiah fears man more than God, trusts in man more than God, and he pays for it. I believe it's in Jeremiah 39, He tries to flee as Babylon breaches the walls and Nebuchadnezzar grabs him, brings him out of the city to a different place, stands him and his sons before him. And the last thing that Zedekiah sees is his sons slaughtered before him. And then Nebuchadnezzar takes his thumbs and pushes in Zedekiah's eyes and crushes them so that he's blind. Very gruesome end for this man who did not Listen to God's Word. It was not enough that he was concerned about what God had to say. That's better than Jehoiakim. Wasn't like he was, you know, throwing the Bible into the fire. But yet, this man still paid for his lack of trust, for his rebellion against God. because that guilt, that concern did not bring him to a place of repentance, did not bring him to a place of trust. He kept relying on himself and man rather than God. These are sobering examples of people who did not heed conscience, and we have much to gain by learning from them. We want to avoid the fates of such men. We want to avoid coming to a place where our own hearts have muted the voice of the Holy Spirit and His Word, have come to a place where we will suffer God's chastening, even as Christians, even as Christians suffer the discipline of God because we did not listen to Him. If you're a Christian, praise God, you will not suffer in hell. And yet God intends for you and your conscience to have joy and peace and a goodness and a clear account before him so that you might not have to suffer as somebody who's been disobedient. So we want to consider these things. So we want to have an overview here about the conscience. What is the conscience? That's a necessary thing to understand. Well, it is that part of us which is aware morally. It's our moral awareness. One Christian called it our spiritual nervous system. So it is that faculty in us which distinguishes right and wrong. good and bad, in our thoughts, in our feelings, in our will, in our actions. And God uses guilt to alarm us and to show us that there's a problem. You know, this is the smoke detector of us for us morally. This is our check engine light for our heart. This is its purpose. Romans 2.15, There, Paul talks about the conscience of all, the work of the law of God written on the heart. So everyone has this in a general way. And the conscience will accuse or excuse each person. So the conscience tells us when we've done wrong, it accuses us, and it excuses us. It is clear when we know we haven't done something wrong. So last Sunday, I gave that example. Somebody pointed their fingers at me and said, Logan, you stole a million dollars. My conscience would be clear. It would not accuse me. It would excuse me. I would say, I've done many wicked things, unfortunately, but I've not done that thing. That is a false charge. My conscience is clear on that. So it is operating in us in such a way. The Bible talks about an evil conscience. Every unbeliever has what the Bible calls an evil conscience. This is in Hebrews 9, Hebrews 10. And the Christian through salvation in Jesus Christ is delivered from that evil conscience. A conscience which is weighed down, utterly weighed down by the guilt of their sin, has no true place to go to to find real forgiveness, and is distorted because of their sinfulness. So it's not working properly. It's an evil conscience. It's somebody who's tampered with the smoke detector. Now it's not picking up what it should. It's that check engine light, which is going on and off in very unpredictable ways. Or maybe it doesn't go off at all, even though there's smoke coming from under the hood now. Doesn't work properly because of the flesh, because of our corruption. But, you know, we won't take the time. You can listen to the sermon from last Sunday if you want on Sermon Audio. But through Hebrews 9 and 10, we learn that the blood of Jesus cleanses and purifies the believer's conscience. So when somebody's born again, their conscience is restored. It starts to be renewed. And it has this blessed assurance that Jesus has paid for that person's sin. It is no longer weighed down by that great burden of sin as Pilgrim was, graceless, until he came to the foot of the cross and then it came off his back, John Bunyan writes about in Pilgrim's Progress. So that's why in Hebrews 10, 22, the writer says, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith. with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. So the only way a sinner like you and I can approach a holy God is through the blood of Jesus Christ. We are not good enough. And if we try to think of any other way that we could have friendship with a holy God, It's impossible. We'd be lying to ourselves. Deep down, we would know this is a farce. We need to be able to anchor our hearts in who Jesus is, what he has done, his promises, him crying out on the cross, it is finished. That verse that was just read, that I actually happened to pray through, 2 Corinthians 5, 21. That because Jesus Christ became sin for us, that now in him the Christian has become the righteousness of God. A righteousness not our own and yet which God gives us through faith so that we can actually stand before him and recognize we can draw near to him. What an amazing truth. And the command to draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith is only because our conscience has been sprinkled clean, purified from an evil one, now to a purified one because of Jesus Christ and Him alone. The unbeliever cannot have that assurance. Titus 1.15, There, Paul says, to the pure, all things are pure. But to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure. But both their minds and their consciences are defiled. They're corrupted. That's that sin which has still overtaken the conscience. So that the purity of Christ is rejected. And some kind of substitute is put on it. It's a band-aid over a very serious problem. That's what the unbeliever wants. To try to quiet the conscience. They'll do some kind of works-based religion. They'll join the Rotary Club. They'll try to do good to people. They'll do a bazillion different things. They'll minimize what the law of God really is. Try to not make God so holy. whatever they can do to quiet their conscience. And yet they're defiled, calling evil good and good evil, as Isaiah 5 warns about. And this corrupting of conscience leads ultimately an unbeliever to gain that seared conscience, that 1 Timothy 4.2. That's what Jehoiakim had. At some point, Jehoiakim was rejecting God's word, and over time, he rejected, rejected, rejected, rejected so much that he could stare his officials in the eyes as they read God's word to him, and he could cut it up and burn it out. That didn't happen overnight. I can testify in my own life. I remember as an elementary school child, A grade five kid, I was a real foolish little boy. I took a Bible from our library and I was joking about sneezing on it. I was going to do that just for shock value. I was going to spit on it. I can't remember quite well. I was going to do something very disrespectful to it. But as a 10-year-old boy, Not in a Christian home, nothing of that sort. I still was very conflicted by that. I remember this as I was reflecting on Jehoiakim in my own private devotions. I'm reading through Jeremiah, that's why I go there. But I reflected on that in prayer, how my little conscience as a 10-year-old boy would not allow me to sneeze on the Bible. I just didn't wanna do it, I backed away from it. You fast forward though, by about six years, I took Bibles and I took their paper, and with my friends, I rolled up joints to smoke weed. What was the difference there? To my shame, I would use the Bible for such a wicked purpose. But over those six years, I kept resisting truth. Truth that was deep down in me from creation, testifying to there being a God. Maybe things I heard about Christianity. By that time, I was a militant atheist, and I was pushing against the truth that deep down I should have known to be true. But in my unrighteousness, I suppressed the truth, Romans 1.18. And so I could do that years later. The unbeliever is going in that direction, or God is gonna draw the unbeliever ultimately to Christ. We as Christians will not get a seared conscience. The Holy Spirit won't allow the conscience to go that far into corruption, but we can do similar things. We can not listen to conscience and keep going against it so that it's muzzled and we keep straying from the Lord, and we can continue on a path where sin becomes easier and easier. God has a promise to not leave or forsake his children, so what is he gonna do as a Christian would go down that conscience-muzzling path? He's going to chasten the Christian. He's going to really bother the Christian. The Holy Spirit's going to be working on that conscience. The Holy Spirit is going to be bringing things into the believer's life to try to get them back on course. So while we cannot have a seared conscience, that's only talked about for unbelievers, yet these principles still remain true. The Christian needs to be careful to listen to conscience, particularly the conscience being guided by God's word, a word-informed conscience. The right that we know to do, we need to consistently do that. And when we fail, What do we do to get a clear conscience? What do we do? Confess and repent, amen. Keep a short account with God. Go back to that cross of Christ which purifies the conscience. We really never leave from there. So God did not create us to live with a burdened, down heart. to have a faulty conscience, not informed by his word, not perceiving right and wrong properly. He wants us to have joy. He wants us to have peace. He wants us to be blameless before him. Doesn't mean we're gonna be perfect, but it means that we are seeking to do our best for the glory of God. And when we fail, we confess and we learn and we grow with his help and his power. That is what a good conscience is. The conscience is informed by the word of God, so it's working properly. And it's not alarmed by any pattern of sin that's being held onto, not confessed, not fought against. It's not nursing any sin, not wanting to let it go. This is the kind of conscience God wants to give us. But how? This is where we wanna really focus on for tonight. How can we gain and maintain that conscience? Well, salvation is how you gain it. There's no other way than through the blood of Christ, faith in him. That's the starting point for the believer. But to grow in cultivating this good conscience before God, properly working, clear from sin, Well, we need the word and we need to be watchful. So the word to renew our minds, to tell us what God thinks is right and wrong, good and bad. We need to meditate on the word. We need to hide the word in our hearts that we not sin against God. And then we need to be watchful. We need to say with the Apostle Paul in the book of Acts, I take great pains to have a good conscience before both God and man. I exercise myself to this end. I work out that goal. And I want to share a few more principles to apply in being watchful over the conscience. For the remainder of our time, I want to consider some of these things. And firstly, to be watchful over our consciences, we need to maintain a sensitive conscience. I talked about this last Lord's Day. There's a few extra thoughts here. So, to have a sensitive conscience, to maintain that, it means we cannot go against it. when we feel it's alarm, when we recognize something is wrong, or even if we're uncertain about something being right and it's making us pause. When we compromise a little, we're investing in bigger compromises down the road. We will kill ourselves with a thousand little cuts You compromise, compromise, compromise, and you will end up in a place you never thought you were. And you men, you listeners, can testify of this in some way or another. You know, when I started using drugs, when I started watching pornography, it was not of the same variety or quantity as years later. I needed more, I needed something harder hitting, both drugs or porn or whatever, and it grew darker and darker, doesn't it? It doesn't stay the same. It's because the conscience is getting pummeled and deadened when we go against it. So we need to heat it and we need to make it sensitive, keep it sensitive and alert. You know when you might be sitting somewhere and you feel a fly on your arm. You know that feeling? You might be outside or something, so you'd expect a little fly, but you just, you feel like a little bug go on your arm. What do you do instinctively? Yeah, you don't have to think about it. Or mosquito, you know? You feel that little bite and you're just, you're going after it. It's just second nature to you. Sin and our conscience need to be like that. We need to seek to cultivate such an awareness of what's going on in our thoughts and our behavior, what our conscience is trying to tell us. When there's temptation, when there's sin, we instinctively go like that with it. We are so tuned to what the Holy Spirit through our conscience wants us to know. That is our aim. That is our pursuit as Christians. And so we have to guard our conscience in the fear of God privately. If we're not going to do this privately, when there's no one else around except for us and God, it's going to show up in all of our walk. If we're willing to fear man more than God, we're willing to do certain things in front of man, but when it's just us and God, well, we just let loose. That shows a conscience which we are not keeping sensitive. And even several weeks ago, I confessed to you that my private life before God, it's a lot harder to fight temptation overall, certain temptations. while it goes back to the conscience. It was actually me explaining that during the sermon several weeks ago that made me want to study this topic more out actually. So I am with you all in this pursuit. I have by no means arrived, but we need to keep striving for this. So it goes even deeper than what we are for sure aware is sin. To keep a sensitive conscience, we need to apply the Romans 14.21 principle. Does anybody know Romans 14.21? Okay, I want you to turn there. Romans chapter 14, verse 21, kind of tucked away there in the part of Romans. It seems we don't visit this part of Romans as much. But very important, it's actually the Romans 14, 23 principle, I apologize, but 21 is in the context. So it's good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble. We're gonna talk more about this. The faith that you have, keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who has no reason to pass judgment on himself for what he approves. It's this language of passing judgment on yourselves. That's conscience talk. The conscience at work. Now, Paul here is saying that you're at liberty to do certain things. You need not feel guilty for eating certain meats. Again, we're gonna get into that. But then notice what he says in verse 23. This is the principle here. Meaning, whatever we are not confident of, that is pleasing to God. If we go ahead and do that thing, it is sin in the eyes of God. So for these believers, especially these former pagans who didn't want anything to do with food offered to idols and yet saw other believers saying, hey, it's just meat, I'm gonna eat it. Being encouraged to eat this meat, yet they were conflicted about, is that really good in the eyes of God? Because they had doubts, even though they could eat that food lawfully, but because they had doubts about it, if they went ahead and did that, they'd be sinning against God. Because what's the implication? God recognizes that even though this Christian isn't sure if this is obedient or disobedient, I guess they're gonna shrug their shoulders and be possibly disobedient anyways. That is a wrong heart attitude and God calls that sin. That attitude of heart. So there was a time I was meeting, I was eating, meeting, eating meat, a big bloody steak, which I really like. And it just dawned on me. I was studying some things from the Old Testament and I thought, You know what? In Genesis 9, God told Noah not to eat anything with blood in it. And that was before the law was given to Israel. Am I not supposed to eat meat with blood? And based on this principle, this was years ago, but based on this principle, I just stopped eating that steak right then and there. I didn't want to proceed because I wasn't sure. And what did I do though? To get an informed conscience. Remember that's part of a good conscience. The word of God informing your conscience. I talked with Pastor Bud. I did some more study and, and, you know, first Timothy four, I can eat anything if I give thanks to God. The Word sanctifies it. The Word and prayer sanctify it. So I have a clear conscience to eat, you know, just not even cooked meat anymore. I can do that with a clear conscience. But I first needed to gain that conscience. If I would have just went, eh, I don't know for sure if this is pleasing to God, but I'm going to do it anyways, that would have been sin. It's not proceeding from faith. So we need to be willing to stop, to put on the brakes on an action if we're not sure if this is pleasing to God or not. Is that going to be inconvenient? Yes, it will be. Will that maybe even affect your relationships with others? It will, yeah. It might even be a cause for you to be ridiculed. If we want to maintain a good conscience, we can expect the world is going to hate us for it. because they're gonna think we're spiritually OCD. We're neurotic about this one. Really, we're just trying to cultivate the proper moral compass that God wants us to have. And we can't do that when we muzzle it. So that principle, Romans 14, 23, is very key in all this. Secondly, though, to maintain and gain a good conscience, we need to confess quickly. This was alluded to. But this is really crucial, because guess what? We will go against our conscience. I hate to say that, but we are going to struggle with sin. And what happens when our conscience is just beating us up? We need to confess. We need to go back to the cross of Christ. We need to claim that promise of 1 John 1, 9. God is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness if we confess those sins to him. So every sin that we're aware of, we need to be actively and quickly bringing to the Lord and taking in those precious promises to forgive us. I want you to turn to Leviticus 19. I'm bringing you all over the Bible tonight. Leviticus 19. Again, tucked away here is a very important passage, talking about not just confessing to God, but confessing to others, dealing with heart issues. So Leviticus 19, verse 17. God says, you shall not hate your brother in your heart. but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. I am Yahweh. The second greatest commandment, that's where it's from. Jesus quotes Leviticus 19, 18 to demonstrate that. And it's very interesting to love my neighbor as myself. What's the context of that command? Well, if there's an issue between my neighbor and I, rather than holding it in my heart, incurring sin because of this issue. God calls this sin, to be hating my brother, to be bitter towards another person, to let an offense fester. I ought to go and reason frankly with my neighbor. Sit down with that person and say, you said this thing. I just want to humbly come to you and say, you know, that hurt me. This happened. I want to have a clear conscience and be able to work it out with you. I don't want to have to see you and bear a grudge against you or hear your name and this wrong comes up. You know, brothers, if you hear somebody's name or you see somebody and you associate something that they've done to you, when you see them or hear their name, that's a grudge most likely. And that's something God wants you to take care of. The Proverbs say it's one's glory to overlook an offense. Praise God if you can do that. There are some sins, though, that you're going to have to go to your neighbor and reason frankly about. Otherwise, it is sin before God, and you're going to be weighed down by bitterness. So to do this early, to do this quickly, you know, in a wise way, of course, don't rush into a situation, especially if you're going to have to untangle some issues with another person. But the principle underneath this here is that stuff going on in your heart, you got to take care of it. And that includes with other people. There are churches which are so spiritually hindered. because of a lack of unity, because they have all these interpersonal issues that have not been dealt with biblically. So we need to fear God enough to move forward and make things right with our neighbors, make things right with him very quickly. That is very important in maintaining a good conscience. Now, thirdly, we need to be ready to give up our rights for the sake of others. giving up our rights for the sake of others. I want you to turn to 1 Corinthians 10. This is where the food offered to idols talk comes in. 1 Corinthians 10, really chapters eight to 10, are all about this matter of conscience. A particular issue's going on in the Corinthian church, but the principles apply to us too. So just to set up some context here, because we're pretty much at the end of the chapter, there were Christians eating whatever they pleased, eating meat that was sacrificed to idols. You need to understand, they didn't have some grocery store to go to and everybody gets to buy meat. They didn't have a soup kitchen where they actually gave meat. Meat was not very cheap. Meat was a good meal. And so when the pagan priests in these Gentile cities, after they had sacrificed the meat to an idol, guess what? That idol doesn't eat the meat, does it? So you still got this meat there. Well, then they take that meat and they go to the market and they sell it for cheap. So you got discounted meat. The poor Christians could actually afford this. Sometimes they also had festivals, pagan holidays and so forth, where if you went in, you'd get a free meal. But guess what they were doing around you? So some of these Christians, able to eat this meat, they looked at the meat, they said, there's nothing wrong with this meat, I'm gonna eat it. They were doing that, but there were other Christians in this congregation going, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I remember when I ate that meat. I don't want anything to do with my past. That plagues my conscience. I don't want any of that. But what was happening was some of these other Christians were just giving them the elbow saying, oh, you're thinking too much, come on with us. It's fine, don't worry about it. And Paul writes to them, no, no, no. Don't do that to your brother. Don't defile and wound their conscience. Don't encourage them to do something that they're not comfortable with. And so, how does he apply that for himself? Well, he says, sorry, I'm in chapter 11 there. Verse 27, if one of the unbelievers invites you to dinner and you are disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience. So for us today, let's say a Muslim friend invites you over. If you know anything about Islam, they sacrifice their animals a specific way. They need halal meat. They essentially offer the animal to Allah, okay? So you apply this to yourself as a Christian. Go there, eat the meat. The meat's not tainted by the sacrifice. It's not like a demon went in the meat or something. That's not what the Bible teaches. So you can eat the meat. Don't ask about it, but eat it. But, verse 28, if someone says to you, this has been offered in sacrifice, then do not eat it for the sake of the one who informed you and for the sake of conscience. You're doing this for the sake of conscience. But notice what he says really quickly after. I do not mean your conscience, but his. For why should my liberty be determined by someone else's conscience? If I partake with thankfulness, why am I denounced because of that for which I give thanks? So remember what Paul's saying here. It's not even if you yourself are conflicted about eating this meat. Again, you give thanks to God, everything's sanctified by the word and prayer. If you thank at 1 Timothy 4. But what he's saying is, to those around you, that can give the wrong message. And you need to be careful that you don't tempt someone else to do what you're doing when they have doubts. So it would be like a new believer among us from India. They were in a Hindu religion. They didn't eat cows. And even as a Christian, their conscience is still working that out. Oh, I can eat beef now. I can eat a cow. I was raised my whole life not being able to do that. Well, don't come alongside him and give him a big beef burger and just say, hey, you can do this now, do it. That will wound the conscience. It'll start to mess up his moral compass. So even though you think it's fine, there are some things that just for the sake of someone else's conscience, Paul is saying you should live like this. This is how important the conscience really is. Because again, those Christians, if they start saying, I don't know if God's pleased about this, I guess I'll do it anyways. Bob said I can do it. Well, who's the authority in their life now? Bob, a man. And it doesn't end there. They make a little compromise here, they make a little compromise there, their conscience starts to get wounded. It's not working properly. That's the nature of the conscience. So we need to be so mindful of this that for other people's consciences, we seek to protect them. Now, finally, for ourselves, fourthly, we need to be ready to give up our own personal rights and preferences for the sake of conscience. Turn to Romans 13. This will be our last passage. Oh, I want to say one last thing about 1 Corinthians 10 there. You can turn to Romans 13, but forgot to mention this. You know, 1 Corinthians 10 31, this is that passage many Christians know. So whether you eat or you drink, do all things for the glory of God. The context there is about the conscience. There is a principle about, you know, if I have a glass of water and I drink it, I should enjoy it to the glory of God. There is a principle there to say, even in the mundane things like eating and drinking, everything's done for the glory of God. It's true, you can apply it that way, but we have to remember, this is coming at the end of a big, long talk. This is three whole chapters dedicated on this subject. And so what Paul is saying is, whether you eat or you drink, what you eat, what you drink, be mindful of other people's consciences and that glorifies God. There's a reason why I could drink an alcoholic drink and I choose not to. 2014 was my last glass of wine because I wanted to be in this ministry and I knew the brothers that I would be alongside. Imagine if I invite you over and I offer you a glass of wine. I probably just have a glass of wine in front of you. Or you see it in my rack, you know, in my fridge or something, a case of beer. That wouldn't be sin for me to drink a beer. It would be sin for me to be so thoughtless as to inadvertently tempt someone else to go against conscience. Oh, Logan does that. So I guess I should do it. And then what happens? All types of bad stuff. So I just had to talk about 1 Corinthians 10 31 there because we can quote that verse and yet we can kind of forget the context that it's in. And I think that's actually really important to get for the sake of understanding how important conscience is. So Romans 13, big chapter on submitting to government. Many of us have probably been thinking about this chapter lately. Verse five, after Paul says the government's instituted by God, we ought to submit to them. He says, therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath, but also for the sake of conscience. For because of this, and I understand that to mean because of conscience, you also pay taxes for the authorities, our ministers of God. Attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them. Taxes to whom taxes are owed. Revenue to whom revenue is owed. Respect to whom respect is owed. Honor to whom honor is owed. Now, the details of all this chapter, I think we as the church are still wrestling with how does this apply for today. I know I am. I don't pretend to have arrived at the best understanding of how all this applies to our current situation. But I know this. It is clear that we do not get to resist authorities, resist the government based off of what we think they ought to be doing, what we think or what we like, what our preference would be. We submit to them for the sake of conscience, for the sake of wanting to follow Jesus Christ that the chief authority and not allow sinful preferences, our own sinful desires, to be what guides us. What Paul is alluding to here, I believe, about the taxes, it goes back to Matthew 22, when Jesus was asked a question, a trap question, about the coin, the denarii. Should the Jews pay this tax? And that coin, Jesus asked to see it. Funny enough, one of the Jews who was asking him had one on him. Hypocrites as they were, I guess, but he pulls it out and Jesus shows it to them. And this was Caesar Tiberius. And it would have said, son of God on the coin. This was idolatry. The background of this was idolatry. And the Jews were being told in their nation to use this coinage. Now remember, they weren't in a church building. The Jews did not understand their worshipful place as the community of the church, for example, or even just a synagogue. That physical land was what God gave them. And these Romans were ruling over them. They did not like that. And then they go and put all these coins out all over the land with idolatrous image. This deeply offended the Jews. And when this was first enacted, I can't remember the fellow's name, Josephus talks about this, but there was an all out riot that happened. And this fellow from Galilee, he tried to totally remove the Romans from power. That's how serious the Jews were against this tax. So though things had died down since then, some decades later, it was still very controversial. That's why they bring it up to Jesus. They want him to fall either by one answer or another. Either he's a compromiser with Rome, or he's treasonous against Rome, depending on how he answers. They're trying to trick him, trying to trap him. But what does Jesus say? So what is he saying? Pay the tax. We won't get into all the meaning of that or application of that. But he's saying, pay the tax. That's what Paul's saying here. Paul's saying, Jesus told you to do this, to submit in this, have a good conscience about that. Don't go off your own understanding from that, resisting the Lord in his instruction. You don't understand why he would want you to do that. Sometimes I question that. When I know my tax money, what is it going to today? Abortions, not only in this country, but in third world countries. Our prime minister sends our tax dollars to countries for the slaughter of babies. Money towards little children, trying to change their gender, little children taking testosterone shots and marring themselves, all types of wickedness. We could go on. And yet, why do we pay taxes? It's because we trust God. And this is what God said, and we're going to leave the results with Him. I trust Him more than I trust my own understanding. And that's what it has to really come down to. There are times that we are called to civil disobedience. This is something that we're wrestling with right now as a church. But we should be incredibly cautious with that option for the sake of conscience. If we recklessly start picking and choosing what we think is right, what we think is wrong, that can have us start to stray from these simple commands to trust God and submit. Because within us, in our flesh, we hate submission. We hate it. We want to be our own authorities. We are predisposed to push against authorities. And I fear as a church today, Whether it, you know, there's passivity on one end where we'd be naive about what the government could be doing with all this COVID stuff. I don't want to be naive. I know Satan is active. He's trying to stir up trouble right now. But on the flip side, we should be terribly suspicious of ourselves and our anti-authority hearts and be very cautious to rush into civil disobedience. So we can be suspicious of the government, yes, but to maintain a good conscience, we need to be suspicious of ourselves. Isn't it true that we're so much more suspicious of politicians than ourselves? And we should be suspicious of politicians, don't get me wrong, but we need a healthy dose of suspicion for ourselves too. And so there's many things that we are to do for the sake of conscience. I could go on, but time already escapes us for tonight. But I hope that through these teachings, we are seeing this matter of conscience is repeated. It is serious. It is something that we need to be, as Paul said, taking pains toward having. That is a good conscience. But brothers, we never ever stray from what Jesus has done for us. If he did not die for us, if he was not raised for us, if he did not send his Holy Spirit to draw us to himself and be saved, repent and believe in him, if he did not take away our sin, we'd be left with nothing. Just a bunch of guilt. So this is not a pull up yourself by your own bootstraps kind of message. Even as we examine our consciences, and we strive to kill sin immediately, and to bring the promises of God, and to watch each other's consciences, and all this labor. Even as we do that, we ought to have a sweet rest in the finished work of Christ. Knowing that we are forgiven by faith in Him. And the purpose of us now to maintain a good conscience is so that we can know Him more. We can fellowship with Him. And so he invites us to cast our cares upon him, to unload our burdens of sin on him. As I've counseled believers, it's been very sobering to me to realize how many believers walk in shame because they just feel so spiritually defeated. They can't live this Christian life. So the last thing I want this message to be is a you're not doing enough kind of message. Yes, we need to be challenged to keep fighting and be kind of aware of our hearts and so forth. But if you're a believer, if you have trusted in Christ, you do this knowing that you have a friend with you. As Jim Berg talked about, we run a marathon, but who's running next to us? Who do we keep our eyes on, according to Hebrews 12? the author and the perfecter of our faith. It's him. So let's do this with his help. Let's ask him now for that grace to walk accordingly. Oh Lord Jesus, we can be so burdened or we can be so cold. We need your Holy Spirit. to not only awaken us to our sin, but awaken us to your grace, your wondrous truth of mercy for us. For we know the one who is forgiven much will love much. So even as we probe our own consciences, yes, Lord, we're going to see that there is much sin, there is much wickedness remaining in us. And yet you have forgiven us by the blood of Christ, we've trusted in you. And so to be forgiven so much, it ought to encourage us to love you all the more in return. Those beautiful words, where sin abounded, grace does much more. That ugly truth that our hearts are deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it? and yet the unsearchable depths of our wickedness in our hearts. Your grace has abounded over that, over that. And if we cannot know the depths of our sin, then we cannot know the depths of your grace. It's greater than our sin. I praise you for that, Lord. And I ask for myself and my brothers, my sisters who are listening, with joy we would fight sin. With a hopeful sorrow, we would reckon with this indwelling sin, but we would not lose heart. You say in your word, if we sow to the Spirit, we will reap eternal life. And we're not to grow weary in doing good, for we shall reap in time, in due season, if we do not lose heart, if we do not give up. Help us endure by your strength, by your might, by your power, by your spirit. We pray this in your name, Lord Jesus. Amen.