Welcome to Unveiled Faces, a Redeemer Presbyterian Church podcast. Please enjoy our feature presentation. The spirit of a man is the lamp of the Lord, searching all the inner depths of his heart. When this concludes the reading of God's word, let us pray. Heavenly Father, We do not as Christians walk in our own strength, but we walk by that of the Spirit. And so Father we pray that even today as we attempt to understand the truth that you have proclaimed in your word, we pray that we would not do so through our own vain efforts, that we would not do so through the power of our own mind, but we would do so through the mind of Christ. That the Spirit who searches the mind of God would communicate to us the very truth, the spiritual truth that you would have us to learn from this text. And Father we pray that we would not only know them, not only hear them, but we would be willing to act upon and to apply to our life the very things that you teach to us. And again to do so in the power of the Spirit. And we pray it in Jesus' holy and righteous name. Amen. Well Genesis 1, 26 and 27 says that man was created in the image of God. And some people have tried to understand this in the physical sense of the word image, as if man's body looks like the body of God. But that interpretation of the image of God breaks down rather quickly when we realize that God doesn't have a physical body. God is spirit. And therefore, whatever likeness man possesses of God must be connected with our spiritual nature. And man does have a spiritual nature. Genesis 2 tells us that God formed Adam's physical body out of the dust of the ground, but it wasn't until God breathed the breath of life into Adam's nostrils that the man became a living soul. And that word soul denotes the spiritual nature of man. And it's here, in the spiritual aspect of man, that we can begin to understand how we, as created beings, reflect the image of God. Ephesians 4.24 and Colossians 3.10 teach us that God has imputed certain moral qualities to man. These moral qualities are, at least in part, what it means to be created in the image of God. And that is to say, man has been created with an innate understanding of moral concepts like righteousness, justice, and holiness. God didn't give this ability to any other creatures on Earth that he created. He gave it only to mankind. And this truth can be seen in some pretty simple ways. For example, if you have two children sitting at a table and you give one cookie to one of the children and you give 10 cookies to the other child, the one who received only one cookie will likely be thinking to himself, this is not fair. This is not fair. In fact, both children will be thinking to themselves, this is not fair. Both have that innate sense of justice. It's only the other one, the one who received 10, does not feel any compulsion to make an issue out of it. And the reason the children can discern the fairness, what is fair, what is not fair, or the justice exercised within that situation is because those children are made in the image of God. They possess a spiritual nature that intrinsically knows what justice is and when justice has been violated. Now, if I did the same experiment with two dogs, where I gave one cookie to one dog and I gave 10 cookies to another dog, the dogs are not going to object on the basis of justice. They may object, but their objection will be motivated by their competitive appetites. Both dogs will be in competition for all 11 cookies. And certainly we would see this expressed perhaps in aggression from one dog towards the other or both dogs towards each other. But what the dogs would not do, what they would never do, is accuse the person distributing the cookies of being unfair. The dogs cannot discern things like justice and righteousness and holiness. Humans, and humans alone bear the image of God. And that's what makes us moral creatures. Now our sermon text this morning describes how we as moral creatures become aware of the moral condition, our moral condition in the eyes of God. It's a function of our spiritual nature that Solomon describes rather poetically as the lamp of the Lord. Or as some of your translations might say, the candle of the Lord. And he's referring of course to your conscience. That part of your spirit that makes you aware of your actions, your thoughts, your attitudes as either being morally right or wrong. And Solomon says that the lamp of the Lord searches the inner depths of a man's heart. And this is a metaphor, of course. It's a metaphor, yet it's a metaphor that can be easily misunderstood. We ought not to think that God shines his lamp into the dark, deep and dark places of our heart so that he can see our moral condition. He shines the light into our heart so that we can see our moral condition. God already sees into your heart. There is no darkness too thick. There is no darkness that's too concealing for the investigating eyes of God to pierce through that darkness and to see with clarity what's inside your heart. Moreover, God already knows the beginning from the end and everything in between. And so there is nothing hidden from the knowledge of God. And the illumination that the lamp provides into your heart is for your benefit. It's for you so that you can see the sin that resides within your own heart. The Bible refers to this as the conviction of our conscience. the conviction of our conscience. And consider the story that's told in John 8 about the woman caught in adultery. The scribes and the Pharisees brought this woman to Jesus and they asked him, teacher, this woman was caught in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses, in the law, commanded us that such should be stoned, but what do you say? And the next verse tells us that describes the Pharisees had actually asked this question because they were testing Jesus. They wanted to trap Jesus. They wanted to find some fault with Jesus so that they had something to accuse him of. But Jesus knew what they were doing. And so he didn't even answer them when they first asked that question. Instead, what he did is he knelt down to the ground and he began to write in the dust of the ground with his finger. And the scribes and the Pharisees, they continued to question him. And after continuing to question him, Jesus stood up and he answered them with what has now become a very well-known, famous answer. He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone. And then Jesus knelt down again. And once again, he resumed writing with his finger in the dust of the ground. Now, we don't know what Jesus was actually writing on the ground. John's Gospel is the only account of this story, and John doesn't tell us what Jesus wrote. But whatever he was doing, it served the purpose of convicting the scribes and Pharisees of their own sin. They had come here trying to get the conviction of somebody else's sin, and what they ended up getting is a conviction of their own sin. John 8-9 says that they became, quote, convicted by their conscience, end quote. And there's that word, the word conscience. The scribes and Pharisees were convicted by their conscience. And what's intriguing about this story is that once the scribes and Pharisees' conscience began to convict them of their own personal sins, John writes that they began to leave one by one, starting with the oldest man in the crowd and working down systematically until they got to the very youngest. And biblical scholars have speculated what Jesus might have been writing on the ground. And they suggest that perhaps he was writing the sins, the private sins of each particular person in that group of scribes and Pharisees. They think that Jesus may have looked up and identified the oldest man in the group, knelt down, wrote on the ground, wrote something that communicated to that man that Jesus knew his private sins, that man's private sins. And then Jesus looked at the next oldest and he wrote something on the ground letting that man know that Jesus knew his private sins. And so on and so on until all the scribes and Pharisees had been convicted of their sins and left or fear of being exposed to the public. That's speculation. That part is speculation. We don't know exactly what Jesus was writing on the ground, but what we do know is that every one of those scribes and Pharisees were convicted by their conscience. John 8, 9 explicitly tells us that. And this, therefore, is an example of how God shines his lamp into people's hearts, illuminating their sin so that they can be aware of it. Along with this awareness comes the inevitable shame and guilt of being confronted by our own sin. Have you ever had that experience? Have you ever felt a conviction of your own sin? Have you ever felt the shame and guilt that comes with knowing that you've done something terribly wrong? That's the lamp of God searching the inner depths of your heart. That's your conscience bearing witness against you, judging your thoughts and the intentions of your heart. If you look in the margin notes of our sermon text from Proverbs 20, 27, you'll see that the translators have noted a more literal translation for the second line of this verse. It reads, searching the rooms of the belly. So the whole verse would read, the spirit of a man is a lamp of the Lord, searching the rooms of the belly. And this adds a little more dimension to the metaphor that Solomon is using. He's saying that within our inner being, within the inner being of man, there are these rooms. The rooms are dark, private, Nobody can see into these rooms so it's a very convenient place where we can try to hide our sins. We can tuck them away there. And what's particularly sobering about this metaphor is that all these rooms are within our heart. These rooms if I could just bring the metaphor to the next level, it has doors on them, doors that we can close, doors we can stick stuff in there and close the door, lock it, so that we can forget about those things and not have to look at them or deal with them anymore. We prefer that the doors of these rooms remain closed and that the lights remain off, and that way the skeletons that we tuck into there stay hidden, and we don't have to deal with the consequences of what's inside those rooms. But that's not how our conscience works. The lamp of the Lord searches, Solomon writes. The lamp of the Lord searches into every room, kicking the doors down, turning the lights on, so that everything inside those rooms is exposed to the light. You cannot ignore the skeletons in those rooms when your conscience turns on the lights. Your sin becomes evident to you. and the ensuing sense of guilt and shame becomes quite evident to you as well as you experience that within the context of your soul. I don't know many people who actually enjoy having their conscience expose their sins to them. Let me say something about that experience that might be a little shocking to you. Having your sins exposed to you can be the best thing that ever happened to you. While many people try to avoid being convicted of their sins because of the unpleasant experience that it always is, you must realize that the conviction of sin is God's grace to you. It's God's grace. Remember, the lamp of the Lord doesn't illuminate your moral condition. so that God can see for God's benefit, it's done for your benefit. It's so that your sins can be made known to you. God already knows you're guilty. He doesn't need to turn the lights on in order to judge you and to judge you righteously. He already has everything he needs to sentence you to an eternity in hell. The conviction of sin is for your benefit. The guilt and shame are an act of God's grace. They are designed to drive you to the cross of Jesus Christ where you can receive forgiveness from all your sins. So sadly, there are many, many people who will never benefit from having their sins exposed to them. The man's conscience opens the doors and turns on the lights to those dark and private rooms within his heart, but he refuses to acknowledge the truth of what he sees. Instead, he suppresses the truth, denying that there's really anything sinful in those rooms. Or he tries to shift the blame onto others, making excuses for why his sin is actually the responsibility of somebody else, or something else. or he rationalizes his sin, telling himself that it's really not as bad as it looks. It's really not that bad. And besides, God is a God of love. God would never execute wrath and punishment upon somebody just because they made a few mistakes. The person who refuses to humble himself in repentance when his conscience plainly reveals his sin to him is a man who has a stubborn heart. He's a man who's committed to being right in his own eyes. He's a man who will argue his point, even if it means that he has to dispute with his own conscience. Can you perceive the futility of such an enterprise? To dispute with your own conscience. Yet millions and millions of people every day, dozens of times a day, if not hundreds of times a day, dispute with their own conscience. But here's where the futility of this is really seen. The only way a man can dispute with his own conscience is to argue for a different standard of morality than what his conscience is using. Let me say that again. The only way a man can argue with his conscience is to argue for a different standard of morality than what his conscience is using. But this then begs the question, what standard of morality does a man's conscience use to judge the thoughts and intentions of his heart? Well, the answer is the law of God. And when I speak of the law of God, I'm referring to the moral law of God. Paul spends the first 12 verses of Romans 2 describing how the moral law of God is the only standard by which the people of this world are judged. Every thought, word, and deed of every man, woman, and child are judged according to the moral law of God. Those who obey the law are judged to be righteous, and those who disobey are judged to be sinful. And after having established this point, Paul then anticipates an objection that he knows that his readers will raise, an objection. That objection is this. The law was given to the Jews. So what about the Gentile nations who didn't receive the law? How can God judge people according to a moral law that they've never received? Wouldn't it be unfair for God to judge the Gentiles according to a moral standard that they are not even aware of? That's the objection. And then Paul gives the answer to this objection in verses 14 and 15. He agrees that the Gentiles were not given the law in the same manner that the Jews were given the law, but then Paul goes on to make an incredibly profound statement. And I ask you to pay close attention to Paul's statement because it has some weighty implications upon the man who tries to dispute with his own conscience. Paul writes that when the Gentiles who do not have the law by nature do the things that are required by the law, that they show that the law is written on their hearts. And Paul says that their conscience is bearing witness to them, either accusing or excusing each man's thoughts, words, and deeds. And so in other words, the Gentiles may not have had the moral law given to them written on tablets of stone, but they were given the moral law of God written on the tablets of their heart. They know what is morally right and wrong because the law is written on their heart. And what this tells us is that nobody is without the law of God. Nobody. Nobody can ever stand before God and say, I did not know. I did not know that that was a sin. God's law has been written on every single person's heart. And therefore, every single person's conscience bears witness to them about what God's law requires of them. Now I wanna pause for a second and direct your attention back to the unique status of humans in the creation account. And since mankind was created in the image of God, every man, woman, and child has this instinctive knowledge of the moral concepts of justice, righteousness, and holiness. And that's just another way of saying that every man, woman, and child has the moral law of God written upon his heart. What Genesis 1.26 calls the image of God, Romans 2.14 calls the law written upon the man's heart. What Ephesians 4.24 and Colossians 3.10 refer to as the knowledge of righteousness, justice, and holiness, Romans 2.15 is calling the conviction of the conscience. The standard of moral righteousness that your conscience uses is the law of God that's written upon your heart. Now this brings us back to the man who's trying to dispute with his own conscience. His conscience functions in accordance with the moral law of God. And whenever the man's behavior is contrary to the moral law of God, his conscience alerts him of this fact. His conscience says to him, hey, what you are doing is contrary to the moral law of God. Yet the stubborn and rebellious man who attempts to escape his sin by disputing with his conscience only has one argument that he can use. It's not a true argument. It's not a valid argument. It's not even a defensible argument. But it's his only argument. And so he's willing to go with it because he doesn't like the consequences of admitting that he's a sinner. And so he disputes with his conscience, arguing that there is a standard other than the standard of righteousness that his conscience is using. And whether knowingly or unknowingly, what the man is really saying is that God's law doesn't apply to his life. God's justice and righteousness and holiness don't apply to him. Instead, the man contends for a moral standard of his own making, and this is why his position is so futile. Proverbs 14, 12, there is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death. The man who rejects the conviction of his conscience is pursuing his own destruction. He's on the road to Hell and he has absolutely no fear that he's going to get there. His sinful heart keeps him from receiving the grace of God and being reconciled through Christ Jesus. Isaiah 59, beginning of verse two reads, Your iniquities have separated you from God, and your sin have hidden His face from you so that He will not hear. They trust in empty words and speak lies. Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity. The way of peace they have not known, and there is no justice in their ways. They have made themselves crooked paths. Whoever takes this way shall not know peace. So brothers and sisters, Understand that when your conscience convicts you of sin, that's a good thing. The sin's not a good thing, but the conviction of sin, that's a good thing. Insofar that as it presents an opportunity for you to confess your sins to God, to repent in the name of Jesus Christ, and to receive His loving forgiveness. Jesus promised that if you humble yourself, He will exalt you. If you die to yourself, then you shall live with him. When you confess that you're a sinner who lacks the righteousness required to stand before the majesty of the triune God, then you understand just how desperately you need the imputed righteousness of Jesus in your life. John Calvin put it this way. He wrote, man is never sufficiently touched and affected by the awareness of his lowly state until he has compared himself with God's majesty. Did you hear that? You're not affected by your sin, your lonely state, until you compare yourself with God's majesty, which is pure. And so every person who compares himself with God's majesty, which I submit to you, can be seen in God's majestic law. Every person who compares himself with God's majesty will quickly and decisively come to understand his condition as a sinner. And such a person will know with all certainty that there is no sense in disputing with his conscience. Because the evidence of sin is so crystal clear and so undeniable that it stops every mouth. So the question before you this morning is not whether or not you're a sinner who deserves God's wrath. That question has already been answered. Yes, you are a sinner. And yes, you do deserve God's wrath. The question before you this morning is whether or not you've humbled yourself in repentance for your sins. Have you humbled yourself in repentance of your sins, for your sins? Do you even know how to answer that question? Do you even know what repentance is? Do you know what it looks like? Do you know what it feels like? and how to be sure that it's real. Repentance consists of three things. One, a true sense of one's own guilt and sinfulness. Two, an understanding of God's mercy in Christ. And three, an actual hatred for sin and a turning from it. Let me repeat that. A true sense of one's own guilt and sinfulness, an understanding of God's mercy in Christ, and an actual hatred of sin and turning from it. So the true sense of one's own guilt and sinfulness is what's provided by your conscience. And that's what I've been talking about this whole sermon. So I don't think I need to say a whole lot more upon this subject right now, other than to say that the person who disputes with his conscience or ignores his conscience or suppresses his conscience is not repentant. We can just get that out of the way right away. Such a person is still in a sin, even though he doesn't want to admit it, He is still in a sin, and should he remain in that condition until the day he dies, should he die in rebellion to God as he's living today, then he will receive the terrible judgment of God at the time of his physical death. The second component of repentance is understanding your desperate need for God's mercy in Christ. Daniel is a good example of a person who understood the need of God's mercy. And we see this in the prayer of repentance that's recorded in Daniel 9. In verse 18, Daniel prays, for we do not present our supplications before you because of our righteous deeds, but because of your great mercies. O Lord, hear. O Lord, forgive. See, Daniel's prayer identifies how a true sense of your own guilt and sinfulness will bring you to realize that you have nothing to offer God that ought to compel him to show favor to you. We do not ask for your favor upon us because of our righteous deeds, Daniel prayed, but because of your great mercies. So if God is going to show favor to you, then it's going to be because he has chosen to be merciful to you. What you properly deserve is condemnation. The person who's truly and genuinely repentant will understand this and affirm this. So he will plead with God, as did Daniel, to show mercy instead of wrath, to show mercy instead of condemnation. Earlier in today's worship service we read from Ephesians 2, verses 4 and 5 as the assurance of pardon was read. And listen again, I'm gonna read this aloud, and listen again, and notice how Paul anchors our hope for salvation upon God's mercy. The very mercy that Daniel's praying for. Ephesians 2, 4 and 5. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together in Christ, by grace you have been saved. And so the first stage of genuine repentance is to possess a true sense of your own guilt and sinfulness. And that should lead you to the second stage, which is the understanding that you stand condemned before the Lord and can only escape that condemnation through God's mercy in Christ Jesus. The third stage of true and genuine repentance is an actual hatred of sin and the desire to turn away from it. Job is a great example of this. In chapter 42, verse six, Job confesses to God that he, and I quote, abhors himself and repents in dust and ashes. In other words, Job hates the sin that he sees inside his heart. When his conscience opens those doors and turns on the lights of the rooms of his heart, Job hates what he sees. He hates it. He abhors it. It's ugly. It's repugnant. It's repulsive. In writing Psalm 119 verse 128, David He essentially says the same thing, putting sin in its proper perspective to God's righteous law. Therefore all your precepts concerning all things I consider to be right, and I hate every false way. So ask yourself, can you truly say that you hate sin? Is there a heartfelt sorrow and disdain for sin, such as the sorrow that David expresses in Psalm 51? Is there a sincere desire to turn away from the sins that have so easily entangled you, never to repeat them again? Can you truly affirm that you deserve nothing from God other than His wrath and condemnation upon your sin? that absent the mercy of God, you're in a helpless state of misery. If this is your attitude towards sin, then this indicates a heart of true and genuine repentance. This will manifest itself to you personally as well as others around you, particularly those who know you well. This will manifest itself through a radical change in your relationship with God. true repentance will manifest itself in a radical change in your relationship with God. You will desire to please God instead of pleasing yourself. You will desire to spend time with God, getting to know him better through prayer and through the study of his word. You will desire to be with God's people, to speak with them about all the blessings that God has given to you and given to them, and to share the joy that God has placed within your heart with others. Some people think that repentance is merely saying the words, I'm sorry. They think that if they can just say those two magical words, that just somehow releases them from all accountability from the sins that they've committed. But stop and think about that for a second. Suppose you take, suppose you sin, suppose you take the name of the Lord in vain. This is a hypothetical. That would be a sin against God. And when your conscience convicts you of that sin, do you think it's sufficient to say to God, I'm sorry? Do you think God is going to forgive you that sin on the basis that you feel sorrowful for that sin? If your emotional reaction to the sin is sufficient to attain forgiveness, then why did Jesus have to go to the cross? Why did Jesus have to suffer the penalty for sin if all that God requires is an emotional response? To think that saying I'm sorry is a sufficient form of repentance suggests that you don't really know what biblical repentance is, if that's what you believe. First of all, saying I'm sorry doesn't acknowledge one's own true guilt and sinfulness. It doesn't take personal responsibility for the sin. Instead, it merely suggests that the situation has brought some form of sorrow upon the person, and that's it. Nothing else beyond that. And second of all, saying I'm sorry doesn't petition the mercy of God in Christ Jesus. So what if you're sorry? So what? How does your emotional state of being obligate God to show favor to you? And thirdly, saying I'm sorry carries no commitment to turn away from sin. There's no dedication to not repeat that sin. Now it's not wrong for repentance to begin with an expression of sorrow. It's perfectly appropriate to fall on your face before God and then to begin with an expression of your sorrow over your sins. But don't stop there, that's the point. That's not sufficient in and of itself. Sorrow alone does not constitute repentance. Matthew 27 three tells us that Judas felt much remorse over his betrayal of Jesus, yet Judas was not repentant of his betrayal of Jesus, and therefore we see how despair drove him to take even his own life. In essence, all Judas was was sorry, not repentant. Without true and genuine repentance, there is no forgiveness from sin. And without forgiveness of sin, a man cannot be reconciled with God, which means that man has not received the salvation of Christ Jesus. That man is still in his sin. Should he pass from this earth without having experienced true and genuine repentance, that man will spend all eternity in the fires of hell. where he will never, ever be able to satisfy the debt of his sin. There is only one person who can fully satisfy the debt of sin, and that's Jesus Christ. He's the Lamb of God that was offered without spot, without blemish, holy and acceptable to the Lord. where every person who falls under the conviction of his own conscience, having a true sense of his own guilt and sinfulness, and has placed his trust in the mercies of God and in Christ Jesus, and has committed himself to turning away from the continuation of sin, that person can know that he has received the forgiveness of God and has been released from the guilt of his sins. Like the psalmist says, my mouth shall tell of your righteousness and your salvation all the day for I do not know their limits. Or like the apostle Paul, that person will testify. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Brothers and sisters, It's my sincere hope that each and every one of you have experienced the victory over sin that comes through our Lord Jesus Christ. It's my hope that you can say, along with all of God's people, that your guilty conscience is the best thing that ever happened to you, because it drove you to the cross of Jesus and continues to drive you to the cross of Jesus, where salvation and reconciliation are experienced with God. So let us go to prayer and let us pray that the Lord's spirit would come upon each one of us, that we can have this conviction and that we could respond with true and genuine repentance. And let us thank the Lord for having delivered so many of us from our sin already. Let's pray. Our dear Lord and Heavenly Father, we come before you today as people who you have created in your own image. And because of this, we have your law written upon our hearts. We understand what justice is. We understand what righteousness is. We understand what holiness is. And Father, when we compare ourselves with your majesty and we see the unadulterated holiness of your being and your righteousness and your majesty, Father, we immediately see our own sinfulness. You have confirmed this for us in your word, and you have even, through your grace, confirmed this to us through our own conscience, who searches our hearts, who doesn't allow us to hide the sin that we have engaged in without bringing this to our knowledge. And Father, while we may be stubborn and we may persist in our sin, we may refuse to acknowledge it, it is not because it hasn't been shown to us. You've been very gracious to us and you have shown us our sin. And Father we pray that your grace would now continue and that your mercies would be poured out upon us. That you would give us repentant hearts. That having acknowledged our sin, having been aware of our sin, that we would not suppress it or deny it or try to dispute with our conscience but rather that we would admit to our sin. That we would take responsibility for our sin and that we would flee to the cross of Christ where we can find redemption from sin. And so Father give us the ability to repent and repent genuinely. Give us the ability to call upon the name of Jesus Christ and to trust in Him knowing that He is our righteous Savior. That His righteousness can be given to us through faith and Father that He takes from us our sin and that He pays that penalty satisfying the debt. And Father, for those who have already been saved, we thank you, we glorify you, and we praise you that your work of grace has been manifest in each person's life, and that that person can now express the joy of knowing the triune God, of knowing that his or her eternal salvation rests secure, that he or she will spend all eternity in close fellowship with the triune God. And Father, for those who have not yet experienced salvation, we pray that even today, their conscience may continue to convict them, and that your holy law might continue to testify against them, and that the burden of guilt may increase, and that their soul may be so disturbed that they would seek refuge at the cross of Jesus Christ. Father, draw your people to yourself. Glorify yourself that the lips of children as well as adults may praise you and sing your praises. We pray all these things in Jesus' name, amen. This has been a presentation of Redeemer Presbyterian Church. For more resources and information, please stop by our website at visitredeemer.org. All material herewithin, unless otherwise noted. Copyright Redeemer Presbyterian Church, Elk Grove, California. Music furnished by Nathan Clark George. Available at nathanclarkgeorge.com.