Getting a Good Conscience

Driving home: And we defined conscience as that innate faculty of self-judgment by which a man tries the moral rightness or wrongness of his own thoughts and actions.

Conscience is personified as a persistent, uninvited, sleepless 'little man' with bad manners and a limited vocabulary (right/wrong, good/bad) who continually passes judgment, even when attempts are made to silence him.

And we defined conscience as that innate faculty of self-judgment by which a man tries the moral rightness or wrongness of his own thoughts and actions. And then I tried to personify conscience into that funny little man who comes uninvited, who never sleeps, who has terribly bad manners, and who has a very limited conscience. That moral monitor implanted within the mind and heart of every single human being who has not lost his rationality, that moral monitor who continually says of every thought and word and deed, right or wrong, good or bad, in the language of Romans 2, action, accusing us ...

4:37 - 6:02 Read in full sermon

The point: Bring your conduct to the touchstone of God's holy law and the light of the gospel to intensify conscience's voice.

The light of conscience is compared to a three-way light bulb (50, 100, 150 watts). Its native light (50 watts) is intensified by the law (100 watts) and the gospel (150 watts), making its accusations more accurate and thunderous.

In the day of judgment, everything will be perfectly just, because all the pronouncements will be according to reality. Here and now, if I may use the analogy of a three-way light bulb, you see printed on the top of it, 50, 100 and 150 watts. We may liken that to the function of conscience. In the person who has little acquaintance with the Bible, who may have been greatly influenced by patterns in his home and in society, where right was called wrong, and wrong was right, the light of his conscience, may be very inaccurate on many points, but there is still the voice of conscience, accusing a...

16:03 - 17:07 Read in full sermon

The point: Stop 'whistling in the dark' about your accountability and guilt before God; face the reality.

Martin recounts his childhood fear of the dark and how he would whistle to appear brave, but it didn't remove his fear. This illustrates how people try to whistle away their spiritual fears and accountability to God, but it doesn't change reality.

Now, you have no choice in the matter. My friend is sure as you sit in this building and your eyes, I trust, are fixed on mine, and that seat on which you sit feels the pressure of the weight of your body, just as surely you will stand before God your maker in the last day. And all of your whistling in the dark won't change that. You know what whistling in the dark is, kids, don't you?

21:16 - 21:44 Read in full sermon

The point: Do not be comfortable or congratulate yourself if conscience troubles you less, unless it has been silenced by the blood of Christ.

Bunyan's words describe his fear of losing the sense of guilt unless it was removed by the blood of Christ, highlighting the danger of a false peace and the necessity of Christ's atonement for a truly cleansed conscience.

Though I was thus troubled and tossed and afflicted with the sight and the sense and the terror of my sin yet I was afraid to let this sight and sense of my sin go completely off my mind. You see what he's saying? Conscience was terrifying me and it was uncomfortable and yet I was afraid to let that sense of the voice of conscience go for I found unless guilt of conscience was taken off the right way that is to say by the blood of Christ a man grew rather worse than better for the loss of his trouble of mind. Unless guilt of conscience was taken off the right way that is to say by the blood of...

46:24 - 47:51 Read in full sermon

The point: If you have a good conscience, you have known the terror of an accusing conscience and embraced Christ's blood; if not, cry to God to bring your conscience into contact with His word.

A hymn by Thomas Binney is quoted to express the theological dilemma of how a sinful human can approach a holy, consuming God, and then answers it with the gospel's provision of Christ's sacrifice and advocacy.

You see the emphasis look at it Hebrews 10 the emphasis is upon drawing near when the voice of conscience is righteously silenced in the blood of Christ the voice of an accusing conscience not the voice of conscience accusing voice then the scripture tells us having boldness to enter let us draw near how in the world can I a guilty sinner draw near to the God who is a consuming fire isn't that moral madness that's the language Binney expressed in one of the hymns I wish were in our trinity hymnal eternal life eternal light how pure the soul must be which placed within thy burning light shrinks...

49:50 - 51:17 Read in full sermon