and it's called conscience corrupted and cleansed. One of the things that I really appreciate about being asked to do a study at a new creation school is the simple fact of being given a study to do that is not of my choosing or leading. and needing to research it and delve into a subject that I perhaps might not otherwise have done. And no time has this been more true than in the case of this present study on conscience. In fact, I must confess, though I am about a week away from turning 60, I have never really studied and preached this subject as I should have, and consequently haven't known it as I could have. You know, we rush around in life, don't we, and busy, busy, and then after what seems a long time, we turn around and look at God's Word and end up saying, gee whiz, I wish I'd known this earlier. And I think that that's the way I feel about this study. No doubt I knew these things implicitly, but how much the better to understand how God made my conscience. and how it has been corrupted and disabled, and how God has cleansed and rehabilitated. Now, your attention has gone to the fact that Jeff and Laurel have just come in, and we welcome you, and we pray God's blessing on you as you are with us this morning. Thank you for coming. Your presence cheers us. So, what I thought we might do this morning is to have a look at the history of our conscience. Created, corrupted and cleansed. The history of the human conscience, collectively, but also of our conscience, personally. Because you know, when you understand your conscience, you really understand yourself. First of all, the conscience created. Genesis 1 and 2 tells us that when God looked at everything he made, it was very good. It was designed for a purpose. It had a functional harmony, a moral order, and an aesthetic beauty. It was like a well-designed, running, smooth engine, beautifully purring, but even better. And the scriptures say that within that creation we were created, we human beings, in the image and likeness of God. which with respect to the conscience means at least three things. Firstly, that that likeness of God in us was one of holiness and righteousness, goodness, love and truth. Someone has said conscience is knowledge with God. That is, living continuously in the presence of God and knowing and understanding and valuing everything in accord with and in agreement with God. Secondly, it means that we were created with a faculty that enabled us to know and to discern the good and the right. and therefore to discern that which violates that good and the right. And that faculty urges us, compels us to love the good and do the right, and reproaches us if we turn away from it. Thirdly, our being created in the image of God means that we were mandated by God to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over it. We are to rule in the creation with moral responsibility according to that mandate. And so conscience involves an awareness of that commission and that vocation. We are constrained inwardly by that mandate, to Edenise the creation and to make it a habitation for man and for beast. Indeed the situation is like a man going on a journey who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, each according to his ability. So here we are in the creation with this capacity or characteristic called conscience. And while the law of God is not our subject here, we need to briefly mention it simply to say that the conscience relates to and knows the law of God, which the scriptures sum up in the law of love. You shall love your neighbour as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbour. Love, therefore, is the fulfilling of the law. Whatsoever you wish, others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the law and the prophets, and these things are known by the conscious." Perhaps we can better understand Jeremiah's statement when he says, I know that the way of man is not in himself, that it is not in man who walks to direct his steps." So what he's saying is we do not have the kind of liberty where we just do what we like. We are constrained as creatures of the Creator, as servants of the Lord, as children of the Father and conscience. has to do with that constraint. The subject of conscience, however, helps us to understand the terrible nature of the fall of humanity from our created state of innocence. As we saw in the creation story, the human couple enjoyed an uninterrupted communion with their Creator and Father. They were one in mind and purpose with Him. They loved and delighted in His law because it was good and it was written on their own hearts. We can glimpse this moral paradise by reading some of the words of those whose consciences have been recreated and regenerated in God's grace. Psalm 119. Blessed are you, O Lord, teach me your statutes. With my lips I will declare all the rules of your mouth in the way of your testimonies. I delight as much as in all riches. Or we could look at some of the statements of the apostles in the New Testament and read there this straightforward, wonderful situation of the first couple. For they lived in love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. They behaved in the world with simplicity and godly serenity. So it's good to glimpse that paradise of the conscience into which our ancestors were created. But, the book says, that ancient serpent who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world, sowed terrible doubt into the hearts of that couple. Doubt about their father creator and his motives. He suggested that he was actually oppressing them and exploiting them and that they needed actually to break out of that. And so Satan lured the couple into acting in direct premeditated disobedience to the stated commandment of their Creator Father. Crossing the line. And when they did, they had an entirely new and terrible experience. Just as they had experienced the pleasure of a good and a clean conscience previously, suddenly they found themselves burdened with deep pain, stressful anguish, horrible guilt and dreadful fear. We could scarcely imagine how shocking this must have been to them. Suddenly, it says, their eyes of both were opened and they knew they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths and they hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. And he cried out, where are you? Can you hear the anguish of the father? What has happened that you should be afraid and hide from me? And the man says, I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. The effects of guilt were that their consciences became defiled, seared, tied to an attempted justification by works, and to seeing God as a fearful judge from whom to flee. Now I want to spend with you a little bit of time just having a look at each of those things that the scriptures say has happened to the human conscience collectively. Firstly, that the conscience, our conscience, together with all humanities, has become defiled. What does that mean? 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. Friends, I suggest to you that a defiled conscience is perhaps the most horrible thing in the universe. That which was created pure, clean, true and holy has become defiled with stinking evil, plagued with incredible stain, I meant to say indelible stain of guilt, and racked with relentless accusation. We pause to ponder that perhaps an offended and guilty conscience is maybe one of the most compelling evidences that we were created in the image of God. P.T. Forsythe has said, it takes as much to satisfy the conscience of man as it does to satisfy the conscience of God. I wish we could tell that statement to every child in school. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. There's something awesome about you. You're created in the image of God. And so the defiling of the conscience set off a chain reaction. Because the defiled conscience deals with sin by multiplying more sin. I don't know whether you've ever read the Confessions of Augustine, but he tells his story of how as a young man he and others would go out and they would steal fruit off the trees and do things and it seemed that the guilt in their hearts just wanted to multiply. Sin. Sufficient to say at this point that our conscience is not a reliable guide in the assessment of our moral state or of the moral state of others. Let me put that one right in there with you first of all. Don't trust your conscience. Attend to it in the way that we shall see, but be careful. The Old Testament word closest to the word conscience, it doesn't appear in the Old Testament, is heart. And often the heart is spoken of in a very similar way. Jeremiah says, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Who can understand it? So to those people who were specialists in obeying God, the Pharisees, God said, you blind guides, because you strain out a gnat, a tiny little insect, and you swallow a camel. It's a brilliant metaphor, isn't it? He called them hypocrites, pretenders, who tithe the herbs in their garden. but neglect the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and fullness and faithfulness. Another thing that the scriptures say is that the conscience has been seared. Paul says, now the spirit expressly says that in latter times, I'm reading from 1 Timothy 4, 1 and 2, In latter times, some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods, and so on. Now this word seared takes a bit of work, and scholars recognise two possible meanings to the word here. One is the searing that you might imagine of a burn or of a hot iron or something which consequently deadens or cools off the nerve. So that which is seared doesn't have sensitivity. That would fit, wouldn't it? That would make sense. Consciences are seared. The other meaning, actually though, is the one that most scholars tend to prefer as more likely to be meant, and that is branded. The idea of a brand being placed upon something or someone whose consciences are branded. Now, let me develop that with you in this way. In our commercial world, branding is important, isn't it? Have you ever heard of a franchise? Do you understand what a franchise is? A franchise group of stores are sort of owned and run by individual persons or companies, but they are all under a franchise brand. For example, Rebel Sports Stores, or Mitre 10, or McDonald's. And though they are managed and run by different people, you've seen one, you've seen them all. Do you see that? Because if you go to McDonald's, you know what is available, don't you? You know the characteristics, Ronald will be there, and you know the kinds of menu they have, you even know the prices, which is reassuring. And what Paul is saying here, I think, is that the conscience that is defiled has been branded with a brand name, if you like, so that the characteristics and products of one who is thus branded have a sameness about them. And the brand name, in the case of the conscience, is Adam. Or if you like, Adams. You've got McDonald's, you've got Adams. And that means that whatever comes out of that conscience is going to have a sameness across everyone who's branded with that franchise. Or as I sometimes say, we're all the same, only differently. For example, at the point where the Pharisee said, when he went up to the temple to pray, God I thank you, what a relief, that I am not like other people. That is what everyone says. When you say that, You are exactly like everybody else. We all save. It's part of the franchise. Isn't that ironic? I hope you can remember that when you get that nice little warm feeling. God, I thank you that I'm not like so-and-so. Just if you can make the connection, that's part of the Adamic franchise. I am exactly like the people that I'm so thankful I'm not like, just when I'm doing that. So the conscience has therefore, in being seared, been hijacked into a system which pretends righteousness by replacing the commandments of God with the traditions of men. simply because they're easier to obey. The seared conscience hates the commandments of God because they're too hard, so we set up other ones. And so Jesus said, you leave the commandment of God and hold on to the tradition of men. Now, as we develop this understanding of the franchise of Adam that has been seared and branded onto your conscience and mine, Its essential modus operandi, its way of functioning, is that one is justified by God, or before God, by what we do, by works of the law. The writer to the Hebrews calls this dead works. Dead works. That's worth remembering. How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God? Dead works, says a commentator, are all formal empty false legal observances and self-invented works whereby people would seek to stand before God. So the operating system of the franchise of Adam that is stamped upon our consciences is to say and make an assumption, look, I have got myself a bad conscience through my failures to do what I was supposed to do and to refrain from doing what I was not supposed to do. Therefore, by direct logical outcome, I can have a good conscience by doing what I'm supposed to do and refraining from what I'm not supposed to do. So, I've got this pain in my conscience, therefore I'm going to lay hold, rise to the occasion, get really committed and have a good conscience, so that I can say, oh, what a good boy am I. Little Jack Horner sat in the corner eating his Christmas pie. He put in his thumb and pulled out a plum and said, Oh what a good boy am I. That's the system of the Adamic conscience. Not realising of course that these expressions and attempts to justify ourselves are merely expressions of our sinfulness. The whole claptrap of it is not an expression of our righteousness, it's an expression of our sin. The other thing that the conscience, the Adamic conscience does, is that it therefore assumes that God is pleased with those people who are feeling good in their conscience because they have obeyed the law and is very wrathful towards people who are feeling bad in their conscience. But there's a twist in that because God is actually opposed to the proud but he gives grace to the humble. So we've got two people up in the temple praying. One's feeling really good in his conscience. God, I thank you I'm not like other people. And he's assuming that God's feeling pleased with him for the very things that he's articulating. I do this and I do that. God's saying, oh what a good boy are you. And he's assuming that God is down on the man. who's feeling bad about himself. Whereas, in fact, opposite's the case. Tricky staff conscience. Another thing we need to notice about this franchise is that it calms and ameliorates its pain by projecting its guilt onto others. Psychologists have a term called projection. that whatever you're feeling inside of you, your thinking and so on, you project onto other people. Well, the trouble with him is, we project it out. This is what Adam did, didn't he? He was called upon God to give account about what he had done and not done and he said those famous lines which every woman remembers The woman you gave me, she gave to me, and I ate. Don't blame me. I'm just an honest battler trying to do my best in a difficult situation. But I tell you, it's hard to soar with the eagles when you have to work with a bunch of turkeys like God and Eve. projection. Do you see it? Part of the franchise, folks. In summary, the conscience that is unredeemed and defiled is in the grip of a self-righteous, unjudgmental legalism in which the accusations of the conscience are appeased by priding oneself and disdaining the actions of others. We, in the Adamic franchise of the conscience, need other people to fail. We feel better. That's what the 6.30 programmes on the commercial stations are about. I call them the oowah stations. We go into someone's backyard, it's all messy, and think, I feel better. Do you want to see how it works? You see these neighbours fighting each other and think, we're not like that. God, thank you, I'm not like that. So the system functions with earning brownie points with our good deeds, scoring points off other people's failures and offering innuendos of complaint against God. That'd be right. Yeah, that'd be right. That's what'd happen. You know, Murphy's Law, if something's going to go wrong, it'll go wrong. Veiled accusations against the Creator, all part of the Adamic franchise of the conscience. Don't blame me. I'm just an honest battler, trying to do my best in a difficult situation, but I tell you, it's hard to Nextly, the conscience is plagued with moral failure. This is the irony that while the conscience is ameliorated in self-righteousness, deep down it is plagued with the tyranny of accusation. God says in Jeremiah, the sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron. With a point of diamond it is engraved on the tablet of their heart. It's indelible. My iniquities have gone over my head like a heavy burden. They are too heavy for me. My wounds stink and fester because of my foolishness. I'm utterly bowed down in prostate." The tyranny of the conscience is portrayed by Pinocchio's conscience, isn't it? You know, Jiminy Cricket? A little cricket on Pinocchio's shoulder. not that the conscience is separate from us, nor is the conscience God, but a little scenario sets up that goes on over and over again. It goes like this. The conscience forewarns of a possible wrong action that we are contemplating. Nope. We then enter into a tussle with temptation while our conscience stands by saying, no. Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin and so very often we lose the battle with the temptation. Then when we succumb, our conscience berates us. Now you know nothing about that, do you? That little scenario. The sickening thing is it just goes, repeats itself, does it? Over and over again. It's part of the franchise, folks. Your consciousness is branded. Paul laments this whole sad scenario when he says, I don't do the thing that I want, but I do the very thing I hate. It's like a war, another law, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a captive of sin. Wretched man that I am. Who will deliver me from this body of death? I'm branded. And God I hate being like other people. Because I can see their sins and they make me sick. The only hope I've got is to convince myself I'm not like that. And so finally, the offended and corrupted conscience causes us to see God as a fearful judge. The conscience is predictive. It warns or forewarns. Like Moses, it says, be sure your sins will find you out. Nothing is covered up, said Jesus, that will not be revealed or hidden. Have you ever sat outside the headmaster's office, waiting? Have you ever had your little sister or brother say to you when you were a kid, you're going to get it? Or mum say to you, you wait till your father comes home. And so, as was said comprehensively yesterday, we have the fear of death within us. because fear has to do with punishment. Well quickly, let's see the conscience cleansed. Hebrews has said, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. I want you to notice the following things in this story that Shirley read to us earlier. Firstly, the man who appealed to his good conscience did not go home justified before God despite his confidence. He was quite confident and appealed to his good works, he didn't go home justified. The man who did go home justified and with a cleansed conscience made no appeal whatever to his good works. None at all. Rather he confessed himself as a sinner and asked God to make propitiation for him. Despite being a considerable sinner, he went home with a cleansed conscience. Jesus taught us that nothing in the law of God will pass away, but here he also teaches us, and this is the punchline folks, obedience to the law plays no part in the cleansing of our conscience. Have you got it? Obedience to the law plays no part in the cleansing of our conscience. How does the blood of Christ then work upon the conscience? Well, it works differently to what we could call Australian grace. You know Australian grace, don't you? I'm sure you'll recognise it when I say it. Oh, I'm sorry I'm late. She'll be right, wait. No worries, it was nothing. That's Australian grace. I forgive you by declaring that you ain't done nothing wrong and forget it because it wasn't anything at all. Let me ask you, does that satisfy the conscience? No it doesn't. It actually offends the conscience. As we have said, it takes as much to satisfy the conscience of man as it does to satisfy the conscience of God. What satisfies the conscience is to see justice done. That is, an unbiased judging of the matter, a just declaration of guilt or innocence, an appropriate imposition of a penalty and the full payment of the penalty. There's a name for that process, it's called atonement. Atonement. Only when atonement has been made can the conscience rest in the justice that it knows. Problem is, we can't pay the penalty. The ransom for a life is too costly and can never suffice, says the psalmist. But God's people, Old Testament and New and today, are constituted, brought into being and life by God making atonement for them. That's how they are constituted, by that very fact. I have given you the blood, says God in Leviticus 17, for you to make atonement for yourself. Friends, there is no such thing as theories of the atonement. Well, in a sense there may be in the world of man, but I believe there is only the atonement. And it is the atonement that God has made for us. We do not theorise it, we behold it. It is proclaimed to us. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And when the conscience looks and sees, as Paul says, Jesus Christ publicly portrayed as crucified, and hears his cry, it is finished. Then the conscience is free to say, if it will, yes, it sure as hell was something, my sin. But the matter has been dealt with and taken away. Now I can forget it. If you were here for Noel's session the other day, there is no muck under the snow, steaming away. And so atonement, in its justice and its truth and its holiness, revives, restores and recreates the conscience and nourishes and strengthens it. No other system proposed can do that. No other system can enable us to draw near to God with a true heart, in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with water. No other system can cause us to have no consciousness of sin. And beautifully, through the work of God's grace in the cross, do you know what? The franchise brand on us and on our conscience is taken away and we bear a new name. Instead of being in Adam, We are now in Christ. Isn't that wonderful? Paul says a lot, I haven't got time to tell you, about the importance of having a clear conscience. On one occasion, when he was before the Sanhedrin, he said, I thank God whom I serve as my ancestors did with a clear conscience. May the high priest as mad as hell and the ordinary be struck across the mouth. People hate you having a clear conscience, I can tell you, or saying you have. But Paul says hold on to that, because that is the basis of your whole life. That is the wonderful generating thing that produces goodness, love of God and His law. Paul said that which goes deepest to the conscience goes widest to the world. Geoffrey's song, which I had hoped we could sing, but we had a parade instead. When the heart, the mind and conscience know this purifying love, then they share with all creation. All they have and all they give is from their God. Have a good day.