What is the conscience? How does it operate, can it be trusted, and how should it be trained? How does our conscience affect us and those around us, including our families, churches, and communities? And can a person truly live with a clean conscience? In this message, Brandon Scroggins will answer these key questions, drawing from the Scripture’s teaching about the conscience and its proper use. His aim will be to show how believers can glorify God and enjoy Him forever through a Christian conscience. 

Well, it's such a joy to be with you. I'm so humbled. I have a few friends here with me and they've been joking on me as we come in because they said, I heard you when you came in, you were negotiating time. And I said, yeah. I was given 40 minutes, but I said, you just tell me when I need to stop.

And they said, you have to stop at 10 o'clock. So I said, well, I'll opt for the stopping at 10 o'clock. Well, I want to jump right in. And before I introduce this topic, I want to encourage our children to look right up here and I want to give a riddle for you as we consider what this topic will be. And so here's the riddle for you and I want to see how long it will take you to solve it.

Everyone has it, Believer and unbeliever. It lives within you every single day. It can be your greatest comfort or it can be your worst nightmare. It must be trained or it will definitely lead you astray. You can use it or you can abuse it.

And it is definitely one of the most important parts about you. What are we talking about this morning, children? I want to give you another hint as to What that could be. Who said these famous words? Sit down, son.

Now you see the world is full of temptation. Temptations? Yeah, temptations. There are the wrong things that seem right at the time, but even though the right things may seem wrong sometimes, sometimes the wrong things may be right at the wrong time or vice versa. Understand?

Then I'm going to do right. Atta boy, and I'm going to help you. Who could ever forget the story of Pinocchio? And what is the principle underlying that entire story, but the words always let what be your guide, your conscience? Is that true?

Should we always let conscience be our God? What happens when this little puppet become boy gets in a habit of being tempted in crossing his conscience? There's times when he begins to turn into a donkey, he begins to sprout a tail, he begins to grow ears out of his head, but the interesting thing is that the more he crosses his conscience, the more this seeming boy turns into a beast. The conscience is a very, very dangerous thing. And so my assignment this morning is to address the subject, glorifying and enjoying God with your conscience.

Turn with me if you will to Acts chapter 23. Acts chapter 23 verse 1. We see this idea of the conscience in an extremely important way. I'll never forget one Sunday morning at the end of a sermon the oldest member of our church at the time who's now passed away A man in our church that was very deeply respected he came up to me and he was the sort of man that when he spoke the room was quiet and everyone listened And this man began to share with me how he thought that the issue of the conscience could be one of the most defining issues of our day. I'll be honest with you, when I heard that, I thought, how complicated Could the conscience really be?

It's pretty simple, right? And then the more I studied this issue, I began to realize this is a very complex, sticky and hairy issue. But I want you to look with me in Acts chapter 23 verse one where we read, and looking intently at the council, Paul said, brothers, I have lived my life before God in all good what conscience up to this day Look at one other verse with me. Just flip over one chapter to chapter 24, verse 16. Chapter 24, verse 16.

Again, what a strong statement the apostle Paul makes when he says, so I always take pains to have a clear conscience toward both God and man. We live in a day today where we have faced over the last few years hot button issues like forced masking, forced vaccine, church closures, debates over whether or not it is even essential or right for a church to be open on the Lord's day. We've seen people's entire livelihood. We've seen the stake of the church all on the line. There are numerous hot button issues that we could lay out that would fit this category that's often called concerns of conscience.

Over the last few years, this has become such an important topic that honestly I chuckle as I have prepared, and it makes me wonder, oddly enough, what happened to the good old days when we fought over just simple non-controversial things like what to do on the Sabbath, how to dress, or drinking, or card playing, or dancing. There are a plethora, a multitude of issues that are put in this category. And as we look at the scriptures, we may not be able to directly relate to things like meat sacrificed to idols and whether or not we should or should go into a pagan temple, but the principles remained the same and the concerns have been faced by every generation. We see governments that wrongly intrude into the consciences of the people of a nation. They refuse to punish what is evil, and then they promise to punish what is good.

We see churches that trample over the consciences of one another and present stumbling blocks even within their own congregations. We see families that live in a state of guilty conscience before one another. You cannot get away from this issue. Let me illustrate just how prevalent the issue of the conscience is. Like you, before I came to this conference with my family, I began to look at the Q&A page, just to think through the details of what we needed to know before we came.

And I found on the very Q&A page for this conference, these words and I quote, "'Will mask slash social distancing "'be required during the conscience?' Do you wanna guess what the answer is? We're delighted for Ridgecrest to offer us to gather according to our ladies and gentlemen conscience and then it calls on us to respect the consciences of other people. More importantly, I wonder, even beyond that, how many people have lived with a guilty, plagued conscience for years, living in slavery, trying everything they can to appease their guilty conscience, to bury a guilty conscience, maybe even to be misled by a guilty conscience, living in fear and anxiety, gripped by shame and guilt, to the point of feeling like you are strapped in a straight jacket. What do we do with the conscience? I wanna encourage our children to think through three very, very brief questions with me.

So I want to encourage all of our children to remember these three questions. Maybe your parents can help you and then I want to see afterwards if you could share some of the answers with your families, maybe even with me, I would love to hear them. Children, here's your assignment. Number one, what is the conscience? What is the conscience?

Number two, why do we need it? Why do we need it? And number three, how do we train it? How do we train it? I hope you'll be listening for the answers to those.

And I want to frame those three questions for our children in the context of three simple, broad points. First of all, I want us to think about number one, the conscience and Christian thought. The conscience and Christian thought. How has the church understood the conscience over the last 2, 000 years and is there any wisdom for us? What I realize about this issue is that when we think about it we're normally thinking of very specific issues.

How do I handle this? What do we do with this issue in our family and in our church? And as a pastor one thing that I realize that speaking in a broad context like this, it's generally more wise to stay at the principual level. So what I want to do is lay out with the time that we have some general principles that seem to be true first from church history and more importantly from the sufficiency of Scripture. But there's going to be specific issues that are on your heart, on your mind, that we're wrestling with in our own local church.

But you know the beauty of that? God has given us local churches with people whom we know and people who know us. God has given you a pastor. God has given you elders that know your situation. And with those specific issues, I would encourage you to go and work through whatever that is through the context of the local church.

But speaking of the church, what about the early church, the church in Christian thought? We see references to the conscience in the early church, but what's striking to me is that in the second century, a man by the name of Aristides was writing to the emperor Hadrian. He was describing the lives of early Christians right after the penning of the New Testament. And it is so unbelievable how well their consciences matched their lifestyle. Listen to the word on the street about early Christians.

They do not commit adultery or fornication, nor bear false witness, nor embezzle what is held in pledge, nor covet what is not theirs. They honor father and mother, children, and they show kindness to those near to them. And whenever they are judges, they judge uprightly. They obey the commands of their Messiah with much care, living justly and seriously as the Lord their God commanded them. And as their lifestyles, their conduct matched their consciences, it was a bold and a beautiful testimony before a watching world.

But as we move from the early church, we move to the Reformation period. And it's during this time that the church really begins to wrestle with this issue. When you think of the conscience, you think of some of the most famous words by a reformer named Martin Luther. What did he wring out in his day but these words unless I am convinced by sacred scripture or by evident reason I cannot recount. I cannot recant for my conscience is held captive by the word of God, and to act against conscience is neither right nor safe.

Here's a man whose conscience is rooted in the convictions of scripture, and He is prepared to live and he is prepared to die according to such a conscience. Calvin said that a good conscience is nothing but integrity of heart. He defined it as a guardian appointed by God to guide man. He said it's a sense of divine judgment that serves as a witness to man. We see from the scriptures throughout the history of God's people that the conscience was understood to act as either accusing us in our sin or excusing us in that which is not sin, but which is pleasing before God.

But then finally, as the church has worked this issue out, as we get to the Puritan period, we see an explosion of writings about the conscience. And what I love is that it's not academic, it's not intellectual. As you read men such as William Perkins and Richard Sibbes and Nathaniel Vincent and so many others, they're writing volumes about the conscience, but they're pastors who are specifically using it to apply to the lives of real people like you and me, living in the tensions of a fallen world, trying to figure out how to please God with sticky issues. The London Baptist confession in chapter 21 says, God alone is Lord of the conscience, and He has left it free from doctrines and commandments that are in any way contrary to His word or not contained in it. Very beginning right there, we see that God alone has the authority to control and bind the conscience.

It's a warning to us very clearly that we must be very, very clear of what we do when we bind the conscience, that we're very clear about the dangers of binding the conscience when scripture neither commands nor forbids in such an issue. Well children, I want to give you a hint because one of your question is coming up. And the question is, what is the conscience? What is the conscience? Well, we use the words conscientious.

To be conscientious refers to being governed by the conscience. We use the word consciousness That refers to an awareness. But it still doesn't help us. What is the conscience? It comes from two Latin words that simply refers to knowledge that is shared with.

So it seems to refer to knowledge that is shared between holy God and sinful man. I would simply define the conscience this way. It's our inner faculty to accuse or excuse our thoughts and our actions. Jeff Pollard has been a wonderful blessing in working through this issue and he defines it this way, it's the ability of our understanding by which we are internally aware of right and wrong. The Puritans had a lot of words to describe it.

They said that it's God's deputy. It's God's sergeant. It's his alarm. They said that the conscience works as a referee. Others said that it's a doorkeeper to keep us out of the rooms of sin.

It's a spiritual nervous system. It works as a register recording our thoughts, words, and deeds. And then it can either work as a prosecutor to show us our sins before God or it can work as a defense attorney to justify us before God in Jesus Christ. The best way I know in simple language to describe what the conscience is is to describe a real issue that we've had in our home over the last year. I don't know if you've ever had this problem, but we have had a major issue disrupting our home and it revolves around smoke detectors.

How many of you have smoke detectors in your home? How many of you have ever had smoke detectors go off in your home? How many of you have had smoke detectors go off in your home on a regular basis at 1.30 in the morning? That would be me. And so what happens when a smoke detector does its job?

It means that smoke is rising and then an alarm has sounded and it means everyone needs to get out of the house immediately if for no other reason that piercing sound is going to drive you crazy until you do. But the idea is that there's a warning, there's a danger. Don't go there, don't stay here. It's kind of like when you feel pain in your body. It's really a blessing from the Lord because it teaches us that damage is being done.

But there's an issue on the flip side, at least in our home, we've tried to work through this issue of a smoke detector going off around 1, 2, 3 in the morning about every few weeks and then after we searched the house we realized that not only is there no fire, there's no smoke, there's no problem. The only problem is now I have a house full of children who haven't slept all night. And so we have an alarm system that's alarming us when there really is not cause for alarm. And so we see the stickiness of the conscience and the need to train it according to scripture. A.W.

Pink said, when it smiles, cheers, acquits, and comforts, oh, what a heaven does it create within a man. And when it frowns, condemns and terrifies, who does it becloud? Yea, be night all the pleasures, joy and the lights of this world. And Ping famously said, it is certainly the best of friends, or the worst of enemies, and the whole creation. This is the conscience.

Well, children, I wanna direct you to another question that I had mentioned to you at the beginning. Why do we need the conscience? We need the conscience because it directs us in a life to know, to honor, and to love God, and to love his people according to his word. So without further ado, let's look at number two, the conscience in God's word. We've considered the conscience in Christian thought, number one, But number two, what is the conscience in God's word?

You say, why do you keep repeating your points? I don't know if you're like me, but when I'm sitting in those sessions next door, and I hear that eight points are coming and I miss one or two of those, I almost think I'm gonna need counseling if I don't get what those points were. So some of you are like that. So I wanna be careful to protect you. So number one, the conscience in Christian thought, and number two, the conscience in God's word.

The conscience in God's word. It's been called the voice of God and the soul of man. Depending on the translation of scripture that you use, particularly in the Old Testament, you may not even see the word used in the Old Testament, but one time. Depending on the translation that you use, you may see the word used 30 plus times in the New Testament. But you see the word or at least the idea prevalent from Genesis to Revelation throughout the scriptures.

Even though we don't find the word as much in the Old Testament, oftentimes the word heart is used in the Old Testament to refer to the idea that we understand to be the conscience. What I want to do is take you on a marathon through all of the very explicit mentions of the conscience in the scriptures. And I will warn you that there is no way that you'll be able to write down these verses. I would be more than glad to send these to you if you would like. But I would like to encourage you just to do with me a simple survey of the mentions.

Let's just take a sampling from the Old Testament. 1 Samuel 24 5, David's conscience bothered him and his heart struck him when he cut the robe, just a piece of the robe of King Saul. 1 Samuel 25, 31, Abigail saved David, and she saved him from having pains of conscience that would later plague his soul. Genesis chapter 20, King Abimelech took David's wife with a clear conscience because he didn't know that this was a married woman. Second Samuel 24, 10, David took a census, a counting of the troops, and after he did, his conscience troubled him.

We see the idea of the conscience throughout the Scriptures, but let me give you two really striking examples. Children, do you remember a man in the Old Testament by the name of Joseph? One of my favorite stories in the Bible. If you remember, Joseph was left by his brothers in a hole. He was then sold into slavery because of the jealousy and envy between them.

He found himself in the darkest place of his life, but then he realized that God had providentially ordered the darkness of that dungeon and that hole to send him ahead to one of the highest positions in the land so that then God could use him to save his people. Fast forward decades ahead, as far as we know, his brothers think that he's dead and he's long forgotten. And then before they even realize that he's still alive, they're wrestling with sin and uncertain circumstances in their life over their brothers being left in Egypt at the hands of Joseph and others and what to do with that. And they cry out, or rather Joseph's brothers cry out, maybe it's because of what we did to our brother years ago. And then can you imagine after that, they are standing before that very brother years before that they had sold into slavery and left for dead and they realized that one of the higher officials in the land is that brother And their conscience has stricken them.

But on the other hand, if you continue to follow the life of Joseph, you see that he's put in a very compromising situation, like Pinocchio, in a sense to figure out what to do with temptation. And his conscience comes after him and he cries out, how can I sin against a holy God? Against a holy God. Let me give you one other example and we'll jump to the New Testament. Not only the life of Joseph, but what about the life of David?

The life of King David. Do you remember early in David's life in 1 Samuel 17 when still he's nothing but a little shepherd boy? David was sent out by his father to the army of Israel and It appears that he's simply taking food to his brothers who were at war. And then we see this battle begin to unfold between David, what would become of David and Goliath in the Philistines. But before that even happened, David shows up on the scene to deliver these supplies to his brother, still as a sort of nobody.

And it's interesting to me that when he shows up, he's instantly scolded by his oldest brother. His brother looks at him and scolds him for having an evil heart, being a sort of show-off. You're just a little shepherd boy. All you are trying to do is to come out here and get glory for yourself and see the battle. I don't know exactly what was going on in their hearts, and we want to be careful of speculating, but I'll tell you one thing that I believe could have been happening there, and it appears to me, maybe was, I believe that it could have been that in their jealousy, that David was the chosen one, that they may have been reading their own guilty consciences and sinful intents and motives of the heart into their brother.

Whether or not that's exactly what's going on, doesn't that serve as a warning for us? That we're careful not to read our sins and our guilty consciences into the motives of the brothers and sisters around us. The conscience is such an interesting thing. We've all heard the saying, and maybe you can even finish the phrase with me, a guilty conscience needs no what? Accuser.

Because it's doing its job within us. Let's shift to the New Testament because we see throughout the life of David in the Psalms where David is crying out that his heart is stricken within him. We see the Proverbs that are training the conscience to live wisely and to apply knowledge rightly. But now let's shift through that marathon sprint that I've mentioned in the New Testament where we see over 30 uses of the word conscience. So here we go, put your seatbelt on, let's buckle up and let's race through.

Acts 23 one, Paul told the rulers, I have lived my life before God in all good conscience to this day. Acts 24 16, Paul said, I always take pains to have a clear conscience toward both God and man. Romans 2 15 says that the law is on their hearts and their conscience bears witness, even that of unbelievers that have the law of God written in their hearts by either accusing or by excusing. Romans 9, 1, Paul says, "'I'm speaking the truth, my conscience bears witness to the fact. Romans 13-5, tells believers in the church to be submissive to governing authorities for the sake of conscience.

In 1 Corinthians 8, we're called not to use our liberty in Christ for the harm of other brothers and sisters in Christ. In 2 Corinthians 1 12, Paul says that he has behaved in the testimony of his conscience with godly sincerity. In 2 Corinthians 4, 2, he says that in an open and a plain statement of the truth, we are commending ourselves before God to every person's conscience. In 2 Corinthians 5-11, we read what we are is known by God. There's no underhand in this, but we pray that it will be plain to your conscience.

And then maybe my favorite verse in the entire Bible on the conscience, I want to encourage you to note 1 Timothy chapter 1 verse 5. Having told us to be warned against the plague of false doctrine and false teachers, Paul writes young Lieutenant Timothy and he says that the aim of all of this is love, the issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. 1 Timothy 1 19 he says, fight the fight holding faith and a good conscience Because there's already people who have not done that and have made a shipwreck of their faith. Did you know that in 1 Timothy 3.9 that it is required of deacons who serve in the church to hold the mystery of the faith with a good conscience. In 1 Timothy 4, 2, the Bible speaks of demonic, deceptive teaching, false doctrine, motivated by demonic influence.

And it says that it can have the effect of searing the conscience of men. In 2 Timothy 1-3, Paul says that he thanks God with a clear conscience, remembering the church in his prayers. Just a couple more, Titus 1.15 speaks of a defiled mind leading to an impure conscience. And then finally, the book of Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 9, says that it is the blood of Jesus Christ and His sacrifice alone through the Holy Spirit that purifies our conscience before God. We have a defense attorney.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you get nothing more from this breakout, know that you can leave here with a washed and a clean and a clear conscience before God because of the blood of Jesus Christ. What you do with a dirty conscience is the same thing that I do with mine. And the only hope for all men everywhere of all times is we take that clean, that dirty conscience rather, and we put it at the bottom of a fountain that has been filled with blood. A fountain that has been drawn from Emmanuel's veins. And we realize that it goes beneath that flood and it comes up and it is washed clean through the blood of Jesus Christ.

So Hebrews 10 says, "'Let us draw near with hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience with bodies that have been washed.'" Question 36 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism asks, what are the benefits of justification, adoption and sanctification? And the answer is that we have assurance of God's love, joy in the Holy Spirit, increase of grace, perseverance to the end, But one of those benefits is peace of conscience. There's so many issues that we can work through and that we need to work through in our families and consciences. But as I searched my own soul this morning, I want to ask you, do you have a clean conscience before God? You say, can anyone really ever have a clean conscience before God?

We'll deal with some of the specifics of that question, Lord willing, in a few minutes, but the answer is yes. Yes in Christ, who is our defense attorney and our righteousness. But I want to take up another question, and I want to hint all of our children that this was part of your assignment in the beginning. The question is, How do we train the conscience? Isaiah 5 20 warns those who call evil good and good evil.

We want to be careful that the Scriptures accuse us by calling what is sin, sin, and then excuse us by comforting us in a life and a heart that is good. I was recently studying through the life of John Knox, and I come to a section that really, really struck me. Dealing with this particular issue, Queen Mary once told John Knox when she was challenged about her faith before the Lord, quote, but my religion is acceptable to my conscience. To which John Knox replied, And I quote, right conscience demands right knowledge and right knowledge thou have none. If I could be a fly on the wall at any point in church history, I would love to go right there.

What a reminder that we must be so thoroughly saturated in the teachings and priorities and the principles of Scripture that it bakes our consciences. There's debate about the conscience and its role before the fall in the garden, but what we know is that life in a fallen world means that conscience, when it's cultivated, is one of the greatest gifts to the life of a Christian. The danger here, generally speaking, in Romans 2.15 is that man everywhere has the law of God inscribed in his heart. And the conscience accuses him when he does wrong in his sin. But I especially want to press in 1 Timothy 4 to of something that we have to be very careful about.

Due to sin, the Bible says that the conscience can be seared. It can be calloused. I was meeting with a man in our church, a man who's not a believer, and he's not obviously not a member of our church, but just started coming. And I looked at his hands and I could tell real instantly, this is a working man. This is a man who knows how to use his hands.

And you know that he knows how to use his hands because they are calloused from wrists to the end of his fingertips." And we laughed. He said, I can't even in my line of work feel anything I touch anymore. But did you know that our hearts can become like that? When our consciences condemn us for that which is sin, but we cross our conscience in just the little things, did you know that it's so easy to then cross our conscience in bigger and larger things until we make a habit of it and what happens is our conscience has become calloused. It's a very dangerous place to be And the Scriptures warn us that we want to have consciences that condemn us for evil and that comfort us in the assurance and peace of that which is good.

Well finally we have looked number one at the conscience in Christian thought, number two the conscience in God's Word. But let's spend the rest of this session looking at some practical applications. And let's take up, number three, the conscience in the Christian life. The conscience in the Christian life. What I would just simply lay out as some consideration, some encouragement, even some warnings.

In your life, in your home, in your church, and in the public square. What are some applications in you, in me? We must be aware of our own consciences. We must be aware of the state of our own sinful tendencies. And I've already mentioned one warning that I think that we ought to be careful of, and that is projecting our own guilty consciences onto the motives of the people around us, reading our sins into others.

But I believe that there's another warning that we ought to be careful of that I would just simply give us, knowing life in a local church is a normal pastor. And that is using this idea of liberty of conscience, and I especially want to encourage our children and our young people in this area. Using the idea of liberty of conscience as a cover to live in rebellion and in lawlessness. It's the idea if we're not careful that we can take this issue and say, don't bind my conscience. I'm free to do whatever I want to do and I'm free to live however I want to live in this area and in any other area.

And we can so easily cloak that in pious religious language with things like, if you try to tell me what to do, or if you bring God's law into this, you're nothing but a legalist. Just a legalist. Friends, the propensity of our sinful hearts to use what is good for evil is very dangerous. The London Baptist Confession says those who use Christian liberty as an excuse to practice any sin or nurture any sinful device pervert the main objective of the grace of the gospel to their own destruction. As we take up the application of the conscience in the Christian life, what about the idea of being plagued by an overly scrupulous conscience?

What do you do with a conscience that tends to treat a person more harshly as it should? You say, what do you mean by that? Do you remember the illustration of the smoke alarm that's going off every single night? But there's no fire, there's no smoke, there's no law that has been crossed. So it's very possible, certain even in the New Testament, that we see hints of a conscience that treats a person too harshly.

I can tell you as a pastor how easy it is to come to 1 Corinthians 11, to stand before the Lord's Supper, to consider how we ought to examine our souls before we partake of the Lord's Supper. But I have talked to so many sweet believers in our church who are simply seeking to serve the Lord and repent from their sin and love and honor Him. But their consciences can harshly and over scrupulously condemn them constantly so that they never feel as if they could ever be in a state of grace to where God could ever be pleased with their lives. Have you ever felt that way? Have you ever sensed that in your own life?

You say, why does my conscience treat me so harshly? It doesn't feel like my greatest friend. It feels like my worst nightmare. Well, again, you have pastors and you have fellow people in your church that know you and love you and can help you work from that. But my first question is, could your conscience be right?

Is there sin in our lives that need to be searched and rooted out and repented from, but we continually shift the blame on other things and other people because we will not deal with sin. On the other hand, it could be that we are simply refusing to accept the forgiveness that is in Jesus Christ. How often have you heard the phrase, I know that God forgives me, but I just can't forgive myself. I don't know what you mean when you use that phrase, but I'll tell you one possibility. It could be a sort of humility that's cloaked in very pious language.

It could be the idea that I can't forgive myself because I have to pay for this one. You see what Jesus Christ did at Calvary in being stapled to a tree and drowning in his own blood for the sins of his people, you see, that wasn't enough for me. I'll have to take care of this one on my own. How arrogant and prideful we can be when God has freely offered and extended His grace to all that would repent and believe and have their consciences washed by His blood. But it also it could be that we're plagued by a harsh unscrupulous conscience because our consciences have not been trained according to the scriptures.

We see this with the Pharisees in the New Testament. They're beginning to build fences that would keep them from breaking the law of God. And what a wonderful thing that can do so that we not only break God's law, but we put fences in our life that can be prudent. Fences to keep us from sin, maybe that would look differently in your family than in my family, but we leave liberty in one another's lives to know that that can look differently for each other. But do you remember what the Pharisees did?

They put one fence to keep them from sin. They added another and another and another and they put so many fences between themselves and God's law to where it got to the point to where not only could they not look over the fence they couldn't even see what the law was at all anymore. And so they began to construct fences that God's Word never constructs and they put burdens on God's people that God said not only can my people not carry, those who are constructing and placing the burdens upon my people can't even carry them. And so we see how careful we must be. It's so important to cultivate our consciences and not to cross them.

But let's move to another application. What about not only in you, what about in your home? How can we honor God and how can we honor one another in our homes with our conscience? I want to give you several practical principles. Families, I want to encourage you to live in good conscience in your daily interactions with one another.

Beware of sinful thoughts and attitudes in your marriage. Children, beware of sinful thoughts and attitudes in your own heart toward your parents. Don't fertilize those attitudes, but seek to live in fellowship with one another and deal with sin quickly. Get used to saying the words, please forgive me. Honor each other, let the joy of Christ reign in your home.

Don't be easily offended, the Proverbs say. But parents, I want to encourage us to consider something in our parenting. God has given our children minds. He's given them affections and wills and emotions. But did you know that God has given our children consciences?

And it's so important when we discipline our children that we rightly appeal to their conscience. God has given us the greatest friend that we could have in the training of our children by placing a conscience within them. And so we appeal to their conscience in their sin to show them how this has broken God's law and how they need Christ and how God has required them to live. So we appeal to the conscience. But we also wanna be careful in our parenting that we don't allow our children the best that we can to go on with a guilty conscience.

We teach them what to do with a guilty conscience and where to take it. To take it to the Lord Jesus and to understand and to cultivate the conscience. Finally, as we think about these practical applications, I want us to think about the church. What do we do with the conscience in the church? This is where scripture really begins to speak into.

First of all, we have to learn where we ought to allow for liberty of conscience. There's many issues in our churches to where I tell our people all the time we must be unified, we must be in confessional alignment, and we must share essential core values. But at the same time, there's something to be said for the idea that we don't have to be twins in order to be brothers. We can leave liberty in certain issues that pertain to how consciences are formed and they're trained. But one thing the Scriptures speak much of is that we must not be stumbling blocks to the consciences of another person.

Look with me in 1st Corinthians chapter 8. Paul is warning not to be a stumbling block to the consciences of other people, and I would tell you friends that I know a few things that will shred the life of a local church quicker than this very issue, and it seems to me that the Apostle Paul may also agree. He issues this idea of the weak and the stumbling block. There's a lot of discussion about this, but it appears that what's going on is that the consciences of some believers are weak, which seems to mean that their consciences have been misinformed. The alarm systems in their hearts are going off, crying out sin, where it may be that there is actually not sin.

But if that were not complicated enough, Paul seems to introduce other issues. It seems that they're coming from a life of paganism, and they may be doing some things that could be acceptable to other believers, but because of their previous associations in their lives, if they were to participate in the same activities that could be acceptable to other people, they may not be strong enough in their faith to keep them from sin and thus be lured back into a life of idolatry. If only it were so easy to say, here's a master list of 10 million things that you ought never do and 10 million things that you ought always to do. The problem is there are some activities that we could engage in that otherwise may not be sin, but because our hearts can use good things and make them sinful things because of our desires, we have to be careful. Which is why it's so beautiful that God's given us local churches to work this out.

R.C. Sproul said, "'The manipulation of conscience can be a destructive force within the Christian community. When we impose false guilt on others, We paralyze our neighbors, binding them in chains, where God has left them free. He said when we urge false innocence, we expose them to the judgment of God. And so elsewhere, scripture addresses the issue that we don't want to be stumbling blocks to the lives of other people.

But at the same time, you say, does that mean that I have to live in a straitjacket and I can't do anything that might in any way ever cross the conscience of the person around me? And the answer is that first we want to make sure that we honor and edify our brothers and sisters around us and secondly we want to do ourselves what we want them to do together, which is to move toward training our consciences to conform to the teachings of Scripture. To the teaching of Scripture. We were eating dinner with a dear family just the other night, and they shared an illustration that I thought was so helpful. Just to show how careful we must be.

They said that they knew a family that was driving down the road and three of their children spoke up and looked out the window and they said that as they looked out they saw a field and the field was just filled with hundreds and hundreds of pumpkins. Three children raised by the same parents in the same home. One child spoke up and said, wow, look at all of those pumpkins. That is so beautiful, mom. Second child spoke up and said, wow, look at all of those pumpkins, dad.

This could be a business opportunity. Do you see that we could make money growing pumpkins? The church third child spoke up and said, I'm offended that we're even talking about this because this is during the week of Halloween. We shouldn't even be looking at pumpkins. Maybe you're tempted to an overly scrupulous, even legalistic conscience.

Maybe you ought to talk with your church and your pastors about loosening that according to scripture. It could be that you're tempted to loose and justify your conscience and blame it on others. Maybe you need to tighten it to scripture. But next, and quickly, what about the conscience in the public square? I'll just hit this really quickly, but this is a major issue in the Christian life.

The Conscience in the public square really deserves a message of its own, but our Founding Fathers referred to this issue as the sacred rights of conscience. I believe that we ought to be free to worship the one true God in Jesus Christ, that this faith cannot be coerced, it should not be suppressed. We ought to be free to worship according to our conscience. Jesus Christ alone is Lord, and He is Lord of our conscience. But then finally, what about the conscience in eternity?

The Puritans pointed out the idea that the conscience is an eternal reality. The unbeliever who has rejected Jesus Christ, wanting no part of him, will get forever exactly what he wanted in this life. And that is separation from the favor of God. And the unbeliever forever will be tormented with a guilty conscience in eternity that accuses him time after time after time for his sin in hell, and every accusation will be exactly right. You ought not to be able to consider these things without great soberness.

The believer, on the other hand, who repents and trusts in Christ alone and is seeking to live before Him, will be forever justified with a clean and clear conscience that will convict and condemn us no more, because Jesus is our advocate and holiness will dominate heaven forever and ever. And we will for all of eternity Enjoy God and glorify Him with a clean and a clear conscience. Do you look forward to that day? Can you hang on for just a few more minutes in this life for that day. For that day.

I want to hit one other reality just very very quickly that again in itself deserves a full treatment. And I hope this is clear and not confusing as we think about the conscience. We need to understand in our lives a few important quick realities. If there is something that is sin according to the scriptures, and our consciences alarm us that is sin, but we do it anyway, we need to be very careful about opening the doorway to more and more evil into our lives and homes. If there is something that is sin according to scripture, but our consciences tell us that it's okay to do and we do it, then we may sin.

Even though the scriptures don't call it sin because our heart and our aim is to do something that we think to be sin. And so we must be careful. But if there's something that's not sin according to Scripture, but our sin tells us is sin, we do it and we go against our conscience. Or rather if there's something that is sin according to the Scripture, but our conscience tells us it's okay, then we sin. Either way, we have to be careful about the attitudes of our hearts and watching brothers and sisters around us in the local church.

Well finally, in conclusion, John Bunyan writes in his work, The Pilgrim's Progress, at the very end he says, Mr. Annas is about to cross the Jordan River. He asked good conscience to meet him at the river, and good conscience was there to help him through the final trial of death. Nathaniel Vinson said that a good conscience steals a man's heart with courage, and it makes him fearless before his enemies. He said Paul earnestly beheld the council.

He was not afraid to leave them because his conscience was clear. Nay, we read that Felix the judge trembled, while Paul the prisoner was confident. The reason, because the judge had a bad conscience, but the prisoner, being acquitted by a good conscience, did not tremble, but rejoiced at the thoughts of judgment to come. Friends, may we be able to say with Paul that we have sought to live before God and men with a clear and a clean conscience and may that fortify steel in our spines and in our souls to fight the good fight, to lead our families and to stand firm in a day and age where Jesus Christ is Lord and needs to be exalted as such. And if your conscience plagues you this morning, I want to remind you of what we have recently sang.

When Satan tempts me to despair and tells me of the guilt within, upward I look and see him there who put an end to all my sin." May we thank God for our consciences. May we glorify and enjoy Him forever with our consciences. And as Luther said, may we seek to have it that our consciences are captive to the Word of God and trained according to the Holy Scriptures. So many issues related to the conscience. Such an important topic.

Let's pray together. Father we thank you for this gift that you've given us. We pray that you would help us to steward it rightly, to understand it, to live in accordance with it, and to live in light of eternity when forever we will be cleansed in conscience. Father, we pray that you would encourage your people, that you would provide a fresh sense of assurance of salvation, forgiveness in your son, walking in the righteousness that you freely give, And may you as a result of this week embolden your people to stand true to your word in our hearts, in our homes, in our churches, in our communities, and in the public square, and to all eternity. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.