In "The Pastor's Spiritual Development, Part 3," Pastor Albert N. Martin expounds on Acts 24:16 and 1 Timothy 1:19, emphasizing the critical importance of maintaining a good conscience before God and men for genuine spiritual growth and effective pastoral ministry. He argues that devotional assimilation of the Word and prayer must translate into ethical conformity, warning against 'mystical thumb-sucking' and the dangers of a defiled conscience, which can lead to apostasy. Martin provides concrete examples of how to maintain a clear conscience by confessing sin, performing duties, and resolving ethical abnormalities with others, particularly within the context of pastoral leadership.
Primary Texts
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Acts 24:16This verse is the primary text for the sermon's theme of exercising oneself to maintain a conscience void of offense to God and man.
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1 Timothy 1:19This passage is presented as a key biblical connection between a good conscience and persevering in the faith, warning against apostasy.
The Necessity of a Good Conscience for Spiritual Communion0:02
Maintaining a Conscience Void of Offense to God3:26
Maintaining a Conscience Void of Offense Toward Man7:17
The Peril of a Defiled Conscience and Shipwrecked Faith11:27
Owen's Insight: Causes of Backsliding and Apostasy14:13
The Indispensable Discipline for Effective Pastoral Ministry17:16
Key Quotes
“You're having a spiritual experience that makes you feel good, but if it doesn't make you a better man, it's not real.”
“It's pride that keeps people from going to the cross, reeking with the smell of the sin they've just committed. Because they don't want to go to God and say, Oh God, I stink.”
“If you can sin knowingly in the presence of Almighty God, you'll do anything.”
“Once they've learned the unholy art of serving publicly with a bloodied conscience, they'll do anything.”
“Moody's old saying is accurate, sin will keep you from this book, or this book will keep you from sin.”
“But if God doesn't take me home, to back off through weariness is to invite dullness, apathy, loss of the felt presence of God. I'm weary.”
“It may even be to invite apostasy itself. Vital stuff, man! This is where it's at! All of the things being equal, this is where it's at.”
Applications
All listeners
Get the sermon series on Acts 24:16 if you've not had good teaching on the vital place of a good conscience in persevering in the Christian faith.
If a duty is made plain, immediately put it into practice or make a commitment of the will to do it, otherwise your conscience will be bloody.
Do not have reservations or let your mind stagger at any truth from God, calling upon Him to give an account of His ways, as this will bloody your conscience and cut the nerve of vital spiritual development.
Seek biblically to resolve any area of ethical abnormality with your fellow men.
If you have been insensitive to your wife, confess your sin and ask for forgiveness, taking personal responsibility rather than blaming your ministry.
When short and insensitive to your kids, gather them around and confess your sins.
If arrogant and opinionated with elders and deacons, confess your arrogance and opinionatedness.
If insensitive and careless with the flock of God, humble yourself and ask one of your sheep to forgive you.
At any cost, learn to keep a good conscience, void of offense to God and man, always, no matter how agonizing it may be.
Pray and ask God to write these things upon your hearts and plead with God.
A full transcript is available on the
tab. 54 paragraphs, roughly 20 minutes.
Machine transcription
The Necessity of a Good Conscience for Spiritual Communion
Sit for another 20 minutes, brethren, or do we need to take a break? Is it all right? Is time to go on? All right.
Not only must we maintain the discipline of the devotional assimilation of the Word, maintain the habit and the spirit of secret prayer, but we must maintain a good conscience before God and men. We must maintain a good conscience before God and men. If we're to have anything that is a biblical experience of real, expanding, varied communion with God and knowledge of God and His ways, we must maintain a good conscience before God and men. And I take that language, of course, from Acts 24, 16, in which the Apostle declares, Herein do I exercise myself to have... Have always a conscience void of offense to God and man.
Back in 1982, I preached a series of messages on that text, and if you've not had any good teaching on the vital place of a good conscience in persevering in the Christian faith, I'd urge you to get that series and listen to it. But suffice it to say that these two previous exercises, of devotional assimilation of the Word and maintaining the habit and spirit of prayer, must find concrete expression in an increasing ethical conformity to the will of God. If not, they have degenerated into just so much mystical thumb-sucking. There is supposed growth in devotional reading of the Word and in the habit and spirit of prayer that do not... ...
...not result in a heightened ethical conformity to the will of God have become nothing less than mystical thumb-sucking.
You're having a spiritual experience that makes you feel good, but if it doesn't make you a better man, it's not real.
And it is possible to have marvelous experiences and not be a better man for them. That is the great attraction of the charismatic movement, because...
...nobody can deny that what they feel in those meetings is real and exhilarating.
It is. I've been in them. It's real and it's exhilarating, but it's not genuine in many cases. And therefore it is essential, brethren, if there is to be real, not sham, but real, expanding, growing acquaintance with God and His ways, that you may...
...maintain a conscience void of offense to God and towards man.
Maintaining a Conscience Void of Offense to God
Now, first of all, maintaining a conscience void of offense to God, what does it mean? Well, it means that I have no controversy with God in terms of sin committed, but not confessed. A duty made plain, but not performed, or sincere intention to perform it in its due course and due time. See, a truth that ought to be...
...to be believed and obeyed...
...to which I respond by unbelief or by disobedience.
To have a conscience of offense to God means that at any given moment I can say with Paul, I know nothing against myself. 1 Corinthians 4.
At any given moment to say, I know nothing against myself. I have no conscious controversy with God.
Now, that's not sinless perfection, because I know in the very saying of that, I only know, the one hundredth part of myself. I know that in me dwells no good thing. I know that the potential for every form of evil is yet within me, and given the right circumstances could break out of me. But it means that at any given point, I have no controversy with God because any sin committed has immediately driven me to the cross and to the blood of cleansing.
And there's only one thing that keeps you from going. There are two things. The major one is pride.
And the second is the secret love of that sin, which will be withered in its power if you go to the cross. It's not humility that keeps you going to the cross, reeking with the smell of the sin you've just committed. It's pride. It's pride.
It's pride that keeps people from going to the cross, reeking with the smell of the sin they've just committed. Because they don't want to go to God and say, Oh God, I stink. The sin I've committed, the smell of it is still on me. You go in that posture and you see all self-righteousness and self-help schemes, they're blasted.
You've got to say, Nothing in my hands I bring. Simply to thy cross I cling. Foul, foul, foul, foul, foul light of the fountain.
I don't wait to get less foul. I go foul.
And you have a conscience void of offense. When a duty's made plain, if you do not immediately put it into practice, if it is appropriate, or make a commitment of the will to do it, now your conscience is bloody. You can't have a conscience void of offense if there's a sin committed for which you've not sought forgiveness. A duty underscored in your assimilated meditative reading of the word, but you've not put it into practice or you've not said, Oh God, by your grace, the next time a circumstance arises in which that's what I must do by your grace.
grace, I intend to do it. Any reservations, any truth that causes your mind to stagger, and you say, but God, I don't see how that can be. And the spirit of Romans 9 is coming out of you, you, the little creature. You're calling upon God to give an account of His ways to you. You'll bloody your conscience. You'll cut the nerve of vital spiritual development.
Maintaining a Conscience Void of Offense Toward Man
And so, if you're to have a conscience void of offense to God, this is what we're talking about. What about a conscience void of offense toward man? What does that mean? Well, that means that I have sought biblically to resolve any area of ethical abnormality with my fellow men. I have sought biblically to resolve any area of ethical abnormality with my fellow men. If I have been insensitive to my wife, I'm going to have to resolve any area of ethical prepared to go and say, Dear, I sinned. Will you forgive me? And my sin was not that my almighty ministry made me do it. You see, preachers don't go around and say, The devil
made me do it. They say, My ministry made me do it. And they hide more sins behind their almighty ministry. No wonder their wives are bitter to the ministry. The ministry is this devil who makes their husbands sin the way they sin. You don't blame it on your ministry. You blame it on your own heart. Blame it on yourself. And when you're short and insensitive to the kids, you gather them around you and confess your sins. If you're arrogant and opinionated in the midst of working with your elders and your deacons, you confess your arrogance and your opinionatedness. And if you've been insensitive, you've been insensitive. And if you've been insensitive, you've been insensitive. And if you've been and careless with regard to the flock of God, you're prepared to humble yourself and go to one of your sheep and ask them to forgive you. It means that even now, in the midst of this message, it came to me, in the midst of our study and in the lecture, it came to me that something I said, my brother Dave could think maybe I was referring to him in an early morning phone call on the home phone, and I determined before he left here, I'd go and say, Dave, I want you to know I wasn't taking a pot shot at you. I wasn't even thinking of that when I made the remark. But you see, my conscience feels pressure on it right here now, so I've got to make an acknowledgement and make sure that I've not raised a barrier.
That's what I'm talking about, brethren. It means, as some of you saw just a couple of years ago, right up in that building, you may have to confess lying right in the middle of a morning service. I couldn't believe it came out of me just like that. On the way to church, talking to my wife about the hymns, and my head got all screwed up when I announced the hymn.
I announced the hymn wrongly. And you know what I did? I came up with a lie just like that. I'm sorry, my wife and I were talking about the hymns for tonight, and I made a comment on such and such a hymn.
Well, we were talking about the hymns for tonight, but it had nothing to do with that hymn. I just goofed. And instead of saying, I'm sorry, for lack of careful thinking, I announced the wrong hymn. I lied.
I lied right in the middle of worship. And then I had to lead in prayer. What was I going to do?
Well, I know what I had to do. I had to say, before we approach the throne of grace, dear people, I must confess to you I've lied in the solemn presence of God. Do you think my flesh would like to do that?
450 people. I don't care what they think.
If I can lie in the solemn presence of God and then fake being the mouthpiece of God in prayer, I could lie with another man's wife. Carnally. I could rob a bank. If you can sin knowingly in the presence of Almighty God, you'll do anything.
I'm not shocked when I hear that preachers commit some of the most atrocious sins, seduce little boys in the congregation, shack up with their secretaries. I'm not surprised.
Once they've learned the unholy art of serving publicly with a bloodied conscience, they'll do anything.
The Peril of a Defiled Conscience and Shipwrecked Faith
That's why Paul ties together in Timothy, and this is a key passage, brethren. He ties together this matter of a defiled conscience in making shipwreck concerning the faith. And I urge upon you to listen to Pastor Chantry's sermon from one of our orientation seasons on this very passage. Paul writes to Timothy, and he says in 1 Timothy chapter 1, verse 19, holding faith and a good conscience.
Which? The pronoun which is in the singular and agrees in gender with conscience. Which thing, not which things, faith in a good conscience, but which thing some having thrust from them made shipwreck concerning the faith. When did they make shipwreck concerning the faith?
When they thrust away a good conscience. When they could go on serving with a conscience that was not void of offense to God and man.
Now the importance of a healthy conscience. A healthy conscience cannot be overemphasized. Remember the integrated circuitry? A defiled conscience will take away all of your relish for the word of God, because you know you ain't going to read far any place in this book, but what pressure is going to be brought to bear upon your conscience.
If the passage points to God, God in his infinite majesty, contemplated by the human mind, will bring home to your heart your sin. And if it's dealing with duty, it doesn't matter where you turn. That's why Moody's old saying is accurate, sin will keep you from this book, or this book will keep you from sin. And if you have a defiled conscience, you'll begin to find all kinds of reasons on a given day why you can skip that allocated time for devotional assimilation of the word.
A defiled conscience will estrange you from the throne of grace. You know you can't have dealings with God in Christ without having your conscience. And if you're not prepared to confess the sin and deal with it, it will estrange you from the throne of grace, and you'll find a thousand noble ministerial tasks that you must do rather than pray, because you can go through the round of your ministerial tasks with a bloodied conscience, but you don't dare draw near to God in prayer. You haven't gotten that hardened yet, but you could be.
You see how it's all an integrated circuitry?
Owen's Insight: Causes of Backsliding and Apostasy
It's vital. Listen to Owen, quoted by Alexander in Thoughts on Preaching, page 110, I am persuaded, says Owen, that there are very few that apostatize from the profession of any continuance such as our days abound with, that their door of entrance into the folly of backsliding was either, now listen to the perceptive Owen, either some great and notorious sin that bloodied their consciences. Tainted their affections and intercepted all delight of having anything more to do with God, or else it was a course of neglect in private duties arising from a weariness of contending against that powerful aversion which they found in themselves unto those duties. And this also through the craft of Satan hath been improved. He has moved into many foolish and sensual opinions of living unto God without and above any duties of communion with God, and we find that men have after a while choked and blinded
their consciences with this pretense, cursed wickedness or sensuality hath been the end of their folly. What Owen is saying is this. Men have given up secret meditation. The habit and spirit of secret prayer for one of two reasons.
Either some great sin is entered and like some powerful virus has rendered them totally sick in their spiritual constitution, or they began to neglect private duties. Why? They got weary with contending with that aversion in their flesh to those duties. And brethren, I tell you, I'm weary.
You see, I started my contending about ten years earlier than most people do, because getting saved and being thrust into the ministry were almost simultaneous. And after thirty-plus years of fighting in that same trench, I'm weary! But if God doesn't take me home, to back off through weariness is to invite dullness, apathy, loss of the felt presence of God. I'm weary.
It may even be to invite apostasy itself. Vital stuff, man! This is where it's at! All of the things being equal, this is where it's at.
The Indispensable Discipline for Effective Pastoral Ministry
And, therefore, you must, at any cost, here and now, learn, no matter how agonizing it may be, to keep a good conscience, to keep a conscience void of offense to God and man always.
As you do, then you will find that these other disciplines and exercises in that integrated circuitry will flourish by the grace and blessing of God. Now, if you're to be an effective pastoral preacher, not some impressive six-sermon wonder who shoots across the horizon like some ecclesiastical meteor, but someone who, like a good fruit tree, grows in the backyard and produces year in and year out, decade after decade, you're going to need a real, expanding, varied, and original acquaintance with God and His ways. And there's only one way to get it. And that's by the assimilation of the Word of God, by the maintenance of the habit, and the spirit of God. The secret prayer.
And by keeping a conscience void of offense to God and man. Now, that ain't complicated, is it? Is that very complicated? You don't need to know a word of Greek or Hebrew to understand what I've told you today.
But that's the battle of the basics. And if I live long enough to sit under some of you men's ministry, that'll be the most telling thing. I come to visit you. You know what my first question's going to be after we get over in the Isotese?
How you doing? How the kids doing? You know what my first question's going to be? How's the battle of the trenches?
I'm forewarning you. I'm going to ask you.
And I may not be in good enough shape to punch you out if you get smart with me. But while I'm going down, I'm going to be crying out, How's the battle of the trenches?
And stick it in your conscience. As I pray God the Holy Ghost will plant it there today. Well, I think we ought to pray and ask God to write these things upon our hearts. And use the remainder of our time to plead with God.
All right?
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It is provided for study and reference only; the audio recording is the authoritative source.
Passages Expounded
Acts 24:16
This verse is the primary text for the sermon's theme of exercising oneself to maintain a conscience void of offense to God and man.
1 Timothy 1:19
This passage is presented as a key biblical connection between a good conscience and persevering in the faith, warning against apostasy.
Texts Expounded
auto_stories
This verse is presented as the foundational text for the sermon's emphasis on maintaining a conscience void of offense to God and man.
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This passage is highlighted as a key text demonstrating the connection between holding faith and a good conscience, and the danger of shipwrecking one's faith by thrusting away a good conscience.