What does the conscience do, and how should we respond to our conscience? What does the conscience have to do with Romans 14? Jeff Pollard explains that the conscience judges works, accuses, and excuses. It does not do but speaks about what has been done. Someone called the conscience "God's deputy, God's spy, a sergeant to arrest the sinner." So how should we regard it in ourselves and others?

� Welcome to the Church and Family Life Podcast. Church and Family Life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of scripture. We're here to talk about a sufficient scripture for matters of conscience. This is part two of a podcast that we began with Jeff Pollard. And so we're going to get into more issues of conscience.

Hey, we want to invite you to our national conference, �𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘦𝘤𝘦 on the Chief End of Man. What is the chief end of man? Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. I Can't wait to do it. Please come.

Also We're having a singles conference. It's a pre-conference The day before on May 3rd Paul Washer and some others are gonna be preaching at that conference. And so we hope you can make it to that. But we're here now to talk to Jeff Pollard again. Jeff Pollard is a pastor at Mount Zion Bible Church in Pensacola, Florida, Dear friend for a long time.

Wow, a lot to say about that. And he also operates Chapel Library, which is a Christian literature ministry and prison ministry. He wrote this booklet on the conscience. He wrote another one on stumbling blocks maybe you could hold that up Jeff maybe you have it because we're here to talk about all those kinds of things and Jeff preached over 30 messages on this topic really revealed lots of fuzzy thinking in my brain about matters of conscience and so we want to just continue that discussion with Jeff from the from part one if you if you haven't engaged that �R. It's the previous week on the podcast.

So Jeff Welcome. Thanks again. Really appreciate you laboring with us on this. It's a blessing to be with you all. Thank you very much for inviting me.

Just before we jump in, I do want to say two things. Chapel Library, while I am ultimately the the overseer of it. We have a great administrator, Jared Swan, our project manager, Nate Maxson, and the whole team that we have, the staff is just the best staff. Oh, they are. I love those brothers.

They are such a blessing. Yeah. It's certainly not just me. They make you look good, Jeff. But the other the other matter is we just released in the Apple app store a chapel library app.

It's really well done and you can listen to audio books on it. You can read books on PDFs, Kindle, EPUB, the whole thing. So we have nearly 900 titles. So there's a lot of things that you can dig in. � That's fantastic news.

Get the app. Click get. Okay, so matters of conscience. We want to continue to talk around the range of scripture and issues here. Let's begin with what does the conscience do?

Sure. Well, as the word of God reveals, we are creatures made in the image of God and within our nature God has included an internal judge Martin Luther said quote for the conscience is not the power of acting but the power of judging, which judges about works. Its proper work, as Paul says in Romans 2 15, is to accuse or excuse, to cause me to stand accused or absolved terrified or secure its purpose is not to do but to speak about what has been done and what should be done close quote I think you've really got a hold of it there. It's a vital matter for us to get a hold of this because what it is and what it does is essential to every decision we ever make. We make decisions based on what we think is right or wrong.

So it's essential that we have a properly informed conscience. And the fact is, while it's as basic as it can be, your mind must be saturated with the truth of God, in order for us to have a good conscience. So, J.I. Packer said that when the Puritans call conscience God's deputy and vice regent within us, God's spy in our bosoms, God's sergeant, which he employs to arrest the sinner. We must not dismiss the � which every man's experience reflects.

We've all got a conscience. Oh boy, yeah. That's helpful. So Jeff, I think one of the things we want to do in part two here is to dive into Romans chapter 14. And So let me tee you up by reading a section of Romans 14, when I'm done reading, just launch in, explain what you think are the most helpful things about it.

So Romans 14, I'll start reading in verse 13, read through 17. Paul writes, � 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘯𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘵 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘴. I know and am convinced by the Lord Jesus that there is nothing unclean of itself, but to Him who considers anything to be unclean to Him, it is unclean. Yet if your brother is grieved because of your food, you are no longer walking in love. Do not destroy with your food the one for whom Christ died.

Therefore do not let your good be spoken of as evil, for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. And then I'll skip down to just the last verse in the chapter, which is verse 23. But he who doubts is condemned if he eats, because he does not eat from faith for whatever is not from faith is sin amen lord of god well paul knows that there's a rift between jews and gentiles in that congregation and he wants to see it healed and he very wisely beautifully pastorally speaks into this without as I said in the last session without taking sides with either group now the thing that he begins with is well if you want to judge something � that is actually a call to the love that Christ commands. If you love somebody, you will not put an opportunity to sin before them, and that may be a lot more subtle than you think. And that's exactly what Paul is bringing out here.

As I mentioned last time, the Lord Jesus essentially says that people that stumbled be his children should be drowned in the midst of the sea most of us don't think for one moment that maybe causing someone to sin should have a death penalty attached to it but I mean it was one bite of fruit in the the garden of Eden that set loose that the entire tidal wave of sin to young men and women and people all over this planet for generations. So what we have here is a verse that's very powerful when you sit and meditate on it. Here's what you should judge yourself, your motives for doing something, for saying something, for encouraging somebody in a particular �e in a particular action? Do you know whether it's do you know whether their conscience can handle what you're setting before them? It's an extraordinary verse when you sit and think it through carefully.

It goes on you know to say many things in that particular verse and we could do a series of messages just on that, but the fact of the matter is what you see here especially when he says don't ruin, don't destroy a brother over what you eat. I do need to make a clarification. When Paul starts talking about clean and unclean, he isn't speaking in a general sense. We can take it and apply it in a general way. But he's talking specifically about the Jews who think that the food that the Gentiles are eating is, they've probably been offered to idols, they don't want anything to do with it.

And their conscience is bound to a portion of scripture that they're still holding onto. Paul does not rebuke them for that that's astonishing but as a Jew he understands what's driving them and so he says now if it's unclean to you then it is unclean and don't eat it so he's wanting to bring the Jews and the Gentiles together because it's God's eternal purpose. And he spends a great deal of time in chapter 15 of Romans saying going back to the prophets, you know, this is exactly what God purposed. So you're coming together and what are you coming together? This glorious gospel of grace alone, justification by faith alone in Christ alone.

� ༀ་།་ ་་་ ་་ ་་་ if you'll, if you want to judge something, not finally. Don't stumble your brother. Don't stumble your, your sister. You're looking at something that could cause them to sin. What did Jesus die for?

To save you from your sins? So we shouldn't be the ones that tempt our brothers and sisters to fall back into sin, whatever it may be. Jeff, people tend to use Romans 14 as the catch all for all kinds of things. � what does the meat offered to idols not apply to? Because I think people think it applies to everything.

But what's an improper application of conscience over meat sacrifice to idols? Well, it can be virtually anything, Scott. We can cause people to fall into sins simply but not understanding where they are and we take a liberty perhaps someone if I let me give myself as an example. Knowing someone, especially knowing pastors in the congregation, that's commanded by scripture. And my role was having a discussion with a woman in our congregation, and I thought the woman knew me well enough to know when I was being serious and when I was being facetious.

I try to be very careful about facetiousness about the Lord's people unless they know me well so she was talking to my wife I came up she mentioned her husband and I made a very light statement I was joyful and I made a very light statement about her husband and I noticed that the look on her face � and I thought what just happened but I went on and two weeks later she called Myra and said why did he say that and she was deeply wounded She had sat for two weeks on something she should have said to me immediately. But she had stood, she'd become angry. I stumbled my sister with a foolish statement. And I thought she knew me well enough to know that I was just being lighthearted. She didn't take that way at all.

So I mean, I did something that I thought was perfectly fine. But it actually stumbled her and caused her to fall into the unnecessary anger and sadness. Yeah, It was wrong. So it can be anything. It can be something that's good.

It can be something that by itself in itself is, is wicked, but that's why we have to start being outside ourselves, loving God's people, knowing them, and treating them appropriately. Does that answer your asking? It's close. There's another side to it and it has to do with the term Christian liberty. Yeah.

And you know, people claim Romans 14 for all manner of Christian quote unquote liberty, whether it really is a liberty or not. So my question is, I know this is a really hard question to pop on you but what what is not what does romans 14 in terms of Christian liberty not apply to? Once again, let me just say if people will read first Corinthians eight through 10 and Romans 14 regularly and read it over, you will see that the answer is, you know, virtually anything. It can be something good. So I mean, something that there isn't a category that I know of that it's like, well, this gets excluded from Romans 14.

The point is, is it a conscience controversy? We said last time, there's three categories. �. Primary doctrine if somebody's got a problem with the Trinity that's not a matter of conscience. The Bible plainly teaches it and you can go to passage after passage into all of the new testament to show that that is a fundamental doctrine in the faith of the Lord's people.

But what you eat, when you eat it, why you eat it, what you imbibe, what you don't imbibe. Every single human family, every single human individual has � t o t s t t e p y e t t d I n an t e r l y s t h I n s t h I n g s t h I t m a t r I p them stumble them we could do it all the time so I don't know if if you're asking what's specifically not included there well primary doctrine secondary doctrine that's that's not the issue that is not something you can plead your conscience about. The issue there is to struggle with the word of God. A conscience controversy is not commanded, it's not prohibited. And those are the issues and the murky waters that we get in.

We have to take principles from the sufficient scripture and study those principles until we come to an answer. As a matter of fact, let me just say, I'm utterly pro-life. I spent six years down at the abodatory here. And I can say without any hesitation, the Bible does not use the word and doesn't say anywhere, don't get an abortion. But it does say thou shalt not kill.

And there's a principle there. There are things that God tells us, people that God tells us to execute and people, God would tell them to go into the land and wipe out every human being there, including the children. So how do we come to these decisions? Thou shalt not kill. It means thou shalt do not kill.

� That is the purposeful taking of life outside of the will and commands of Almighty God. So we can come to the conclusion that abortion is sin. So we have to know the scriptures. We have to look and dig and understand God's law, God's gospel and apply them appropriately. How would you respond to the person who says, well, you know, that that movie that has a little bit of nudity and it doesn't really bother me, it's I think I'm free.

I think they're self-deluded At the very least, if it doesn't do anything to them what could that example do to a believer who's been struggling with pornography for 10 years. It isn't just the one thing. It's not just the act. That's why this is so such a tender and sensitive thing. Right.

You know. You know, people tell me all the time, oh, yeah, but you know, I'm looking at the naked body. It doesn't bother me. OK, fine. But now if you go down to the film I mean to the theater and you watch people fornicating men and women taking their clothes off and all this kind of stuff and say well I'm free to watch that I won't even take the time in this discussion to go into that any further than I don't see that any different than the Corinthians who said, well, we can go into the temple and we can eat that food because we know there's only one God, and so the idol just doesn't matter to us.

We can go in, and we can sit in that temple, and we can eat the food there, and have our business meeting there. Paul says, no you can't, because everybody doesn't have the knowledge you have about that. Jeff, it seems like to me there are two particular dangers. One of them we've spent a lot of time on, which is destroying the faith of a believer with a sensitive conscience because of what you either do or what you approve of. The other danger that I'm not sure we've touched on yet is being in a position where your view of conscience automatically hands control on every matter over to the strictest matter, strictest conscience in the room.

Do you have any thoughts on that? I don't think what Paul � in every circumstance. So how do you sort through that? First of all read verse 17 again. Ok.

Of Roman. Yeah. Verse 17, for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. I'm sorry. No, it's the verse before I think is where you're headed.

Therefore do not let your good be spoken evil of. Exactly. Now read chapter 15 verse 1 and 2. Read that. Chapter 15 verse 1 and 2.

We then who are strong ought to bear with the scruples of the weak and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good leading to edification. So everybody always wants to, Arthur Pink had a comment that you know there are times when you have to rebuke people with a scrupulous � He didn't rebuke the weak brethren for having a weak conscience, but he said, stop judging. That's what you tell them. Stop judging, everybody, according to your conscience.

And then on the other hand, he says, you all stop looking down on those who have a tender conscience stop judging them I knew a guy that had gone from essentially a dispensationalist perspective to one of the groups that might be called reformed, I won't name them because I'm not looking for internet dust up right now. But the fact of the matter is, their liberty was all over the map. And what he would do is if people were talking about various things we could or couldn't do, he would take out a cigar, light it up and blow the smoke in their face. That's evil. That's evil.

� and he took out a bottle of wine and began sitting it. That is the complete opposite of what Paul commands. So my issue is sure there's a place for taking that person with a tender conscience and trying to work with them and lead them along to various things, but there also needs to be on the on the part of those who think they're strong to bear with them, to love them, to look at their conscience and pray for that conscience and say, all right, why don't we keep talking about this? Let's keep our bribes together. Nobody wants to do that.

It's like, you've got to agree with my conscience, or I'm going to tell you about yours. Yeah, that's helpful. I'm telling you, brother, if you'll read 15 and 1. Did you read it? Yeah, I did.

Yep. Okay, thank you. All right. So the point is, this is what Jesus did. Jesus denied himself for the well-being of everyone else.

That's exactly why Paul did it. If you've ever wondered why there is Chapter 8 in 1 Corinthians and then Chapter 10, and that strange chapter in the middle, Chapter 9, like why did Paul put that in here? It seems to be a completely different argument, a different subject. That's not so. That whole thing in chapter nine is essential because Paul says, look, I'm an apostle.

I could do this. I could do that. I could bring a wife around and he beat us. He said, but I don't. And he said, when I'm with the Jews, I act like a Jew.

When I'm with the Gentiles, I act like the Gentiles. Why? Because I want to win them for Christ. And I'm not going to let these things keep me from bringing the glorious gospel in the light of Christ to them. Just so I mean, what I'm not seeing in these arguments, What I'm never seeing in these arguments is first of all a willingness to say if what I'm doing might stumble you, I'm going to make sure at the very least when I'm around you, I'm not doing it.

I rarely see that. Okay. Give us a brief take down as our last point on how you interpret whatever is not a faith is sin. The entire christian life is a life of faith. We don't just believe and then forget about believing the rest of our walk with the lord jesus will he save me and now I've got to go on with my life every single day the believer lives by faith and he has a lord jesus christ is the lord His word commands us how to live.

So what we should be doing day in and day out is filling our minds with what our commander, what our Lord, what our King says to us. That means we have to know his word. And therefore I can the more I know what he prohibits clearly and when I know what he blesses clearly, I can more readily do something or forsake something. So that which is not of faith is sin means I live by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and what he says. If I have no reason to believe that my Lord supports this, I'm not gonna do it until I'm sure that he does.

There you go, that's back to the heart of the matter. Scripture is sufficient and God, only God can rule the conscience. That's right. He's the only Lord. Our confession says this.

Christ, God is the only Lord of the conscience so we've got the bow to him and we've got this that's why preaching is so important Jeff this has been rich thank you so much we really really appreciate it And maybe we'll talk about this at other times, but right now we'll, we'll settle with these two part one, part two on the Christian conscience and encourage people to go and listen to your messages on sermon audio. So thank you, brother. We love you. We love you too, man. Thank you very much.

�' Okay, and thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life Podcast. Hey, we hope to see you in May if you're single at our singles conference on May 3rd, and everybody. It's a big family conference on May 4th through 6th, people bring their families. It's a great place to be. We've always loved you, man, and we've always loved you.

� to Ridgecrest, North Carolina. I hope you can see us there. We'll see you next time.