I don't know that it's reality, but it feels
like I have a great weight upon me tonight in this matter of a call to holiness, and
a sense of fear that I cannot discharge the responsibility that is given to me because
of the weightiness of it. We have learned all about the priority of holiness in these
days, and now it's time for us to look at our own lives and to hear the call of God
to holiness. We all know that the New Testament is filled with calls to holiness. We are familiar
with the command to abstain from fleshly lust, to mortify the deeds of the body, to make
no provision for the flesh, to love not the world, to flee immorality, to put off the
old man and put on the new, to think on what is true and honorable and right and pure,
to let the word of Christ dwell in us richly, to wear the breastplate of righteousness,
to buffet our body to bring it into subjection, to present our bodies a living sacrifices,
wholly acceptable unto God. We're familiar with the call of the apostle Paul to cleanse
yourselves from all filthiness of the flesh, perfecting holiness in the fear of God; the
call to walk in the Spirit and you won't fulfill fleshly lusts. Or to lay aside all evil, all
malice, and as babes desire the pure milk of the Word that you may grow thereby. We're
familiar with all of that. We all know that. And maybe that call of all calls where the
apostle Peter writes, taken from the book of Leviticus, "You shall be holy for I am
holy." "Be holy like the holy One who called you in all your behavior," Peter wrote. We're
familiar with that. We believe it. We know it. The church for the most part knows it, but
seems to be losing the battle. People come to me so often, if I can be personal for a
moment, and say, "We're praying for you." A lady stopped me out in the hallway and said,
"We're praying for you. We're praying that you don't fall into some sin as so many have,
and disappointed us so greatly." And people will ask me, "How do you live your life to
prevent that?" "To whom are you accountable?" I'm so often asked. "Do you have an accountability
group?" Let me tell you something. I have a group of elders that surround me. Among
those elders and pastors are some very precious friends who spend a lot of time with me day
in and day out, and they are exposed to everything there is to see about me and know about me.
And I'm a fairly transparent person. And they're there, and I want them to tell me whenever
I have overstepped a line that would bring dishonor to the Lord. Even tighter than that,
I have four children that love Christ and walk with Christ. And three of them are married,
the three older ones, and my youngest daughter is not yet married. The three oldest ones
and their spouses have these immense and probably unrealistic expectations of me. My son who
lives in Chicago called me a few months ago and he said, "Dad, I've just been thinking
about you and praying about you, and I called to tell you don't mess up." This is my son.
This is what I told him. He says, "Dad, do you know what you would do to me and the other
kids if you ever messed up your life and did something immoral?" And I said, "Well, Mark,"
I said, "Thank you for your prayers and your concern. It means everything to me." And then
I have 11 little grandchildren from 11 down. They expect their papa to live the way God
tells us to live. And I look into their little faces, and I read them Bible stories, and
I pray with them as Patricia and I gather with them so often around our kitchen table
and look into their shining faces, and I'll tell you something. I couldn't find it in
me to do anything that would destroy their trust in Christ. It would kill me. But the
most intimate point of accountability, humanly speaking, that I have is my beloved treasure,
Patricia, and she's right here in the second row. Most of you do not know her. You should,
honey, you need to let them see how God blessed me. Please. Now, this lady expects me to live
everything I preach all the time. It's really ridiculous, actually. I want to be Christ
to her. I don't want her to be disappointed in her pastor. Can you understand that? I
don't want her heart turned away from Christ. I don't want the standard lowered. That's
accountability. Her expectations, and my love for her, are accountability. But you know,
in the end, as precious as all those people are, as intimately as they are connected to
my life, even they don't know what I think. Do you know that? And if you are going to
be holy, my friend, you have to win the battle on the inside. That's what I want to talk
about. I have a text, and if we have time I will
refer to it. 2 Corinthians 1:12. This is a strange approach for me because I have a very
long introduction followed by a very brief exposition. 2 Corinthians 1:12. I will start
you there, and leave you there, and come back a little later. Listen to it. "Our proud confidence,"
or our "true spiritual boast," we could say, "is this." Mark this. "The testimony of our
conscience, that in holiness and godly sincerity, not in fleshly wisdom, but in the grace of
God we have conducted ourselves in the world and especially toward you." And he introduces
to us the word "conscience," and that's what I want to talk about. I want to talk about
winning the battle for holiness on the inside. And if you don't win it there, you will lose
it on the outside. John Owen wrote, "Let not that man think he makes any progress in holiness
while he walks not over the bellies of his lusts." Owen also wrote, and it is here that
we will stop to consider our subject, he wrote, "If you want to kill sin," quote, "load your
conscience with the guilt of it." End quote. The key to holiness, I believe, in your life,
is your conscience. I don't know if you've ever heard a message about the conscience.
I don't know if you understand how the conscience functions. And I think it's my duty before
the Lord to be discharged to you tonight to tell you about your conscience. Most Christians
have made very little consideration of the conscience, but it was conscience, for example,
that kept John Bunyan in jail for 12 years. Did you know that at any point he could've
walked out of that jail? All he had to do was stop preaching the offensive gospel. He
had a wife and a family, and a blind daughter. And it constantly broke his heart, because
he knew he could walk out and be a husband and a father. But he chose a clear conscience
over freedom, for the price was toweringly high. And he wrote of his sacrifice to a clear
conscience in Grace Abounding, page 123, listen to this. "The parting with my wife and poor
children hath often been to me in this place as the pulling of the flesh from my bones,
and that not only because I am somewhat too fond of these great mercies, but also because
I should have often brought to my mind the many hardships, miseries and wants that my
poor family was like to meet with should I be taken from them, especially my poor blind
child who lay nearer to my heart that all I had besides. Oh the thoughts of the hardship!
I thought my blind one might go under, would tear my heart to pieces." He could've walked out, but he stayed there.
His response to those who urged him to leave, stop the offensive preaching, be released,
was quote, "I would make of my conscience a continual butchery and slaughter shop."
End quote. He said he would rather, quote, "Suffer, if frail life might continue so long,
till the moss shall grow on my eyebrows." End quote. Rather than violate his conscience.
Strong man. Well, you have to be strong on the inside. What is this conscience? How does it function?
What does it do? In the book I wrote called The Vanishing Conscience, I tell the story
from 1984. There was an Avianca airline jet flying in Europe, and crashed in Spain. It
was a 707 Boeing 707 and it flew directly into a mountain and just was literally shivered
into small bits. Everybody on it was instantly killed. As they always do, they went in to
retrieve the little black box flight recorder. And they found it, and they listened to the
tape. And amazingly, this is what they heard on the tape. As the plane came nearer and
nearer to the mountain, and it was flying directly into it, the computer synthesized
warning voice came on and said, "Pull up! Pull up! Pull up! Pull up! And inexplicably,
the pilot said, "Shut up, gringo!" and flipped off the switch, and silenced the warning voice.
And he hit the mountain. And everybody was killed. And when I read that I thought that
that's a clear illustration of how most people treat their conscience. "Shut up, gringo!"
And they flip it off, and they crash. They reject the information that their conscience
is responding to. The warning system in the airplane knew reality, because radar informed
it of reality. The radar found the mountain, sent the message back. Reality was, "You're
going to hit a mountain." The information was accurate. The information then triggered
the synthesized voice that said, "Pull up! Pull up! Pull up! Pull up!" and the foolish
pilot switched it off. In New Testament language, there are no jets. So Paul said, 1 Timothy
1:18-20, "Those who reject their conscience suffer shipwreck." Shipwreck. "And are turned
over to Satan." Conscience is a tremendous gift. We need to
understand the role that it plays in holiness. Conscience is the God-given warning mechanism,
the God-given warning device that tells us we are on a path to spiritual collision. I
suppose the best parallel to it is pain. Pain, do you understand, pain is a good thing? Do
you understand that? Because pain tells you there's something wrong with your body, and
you need to do something about it. Pain is a God-given mechanism to keep you from destroying
yourself physically. That's why leprosy, or Hansen's disease as it is known today, is
such a terrible threat. People used to think that the disease leprosy sort of ate away
at you. Then they found out all it did was destroy your feeling, and people literally
wore off their extremities, rubbed out their eyeballs and eye sockets, rubbed holes in
their cheek because they could not feel the amount of pressure they were applying. Pain
is God's way of putting a warning system in your physical structure so that you don't
destroy yourself physically. And conscience is a warning system placed in your soul to
prevent you from destroying yourself spiritually. In Romans chapter 2, verses 14 and 15, the
apostle Paul talks about conscience, and he gives us a very simple definition of what
it does. It either accuses you or excuses you. It either indicts you, or exonerates
you. It either gives you a sense of well-being, and peace, and joy, and satisfaction, and
fulfillment, or it makes you feel ashamed, and guilty, and fearful, and doubting, and
disturbed, and anxious, and depressed. Conscience is the soul's warning system, and that is
the point at which you have to win the spiritual battle. Now let me tell you something. Conscience
fights that battle all alone. By the power, of course, of the truth, and the Spirit of
God, but without any other human to help. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 2, "Only the spirit
of a man knows what is," where? "in the man." The ancient Greeks understood conscience,
and they personified conscience as a goddess. And the name of that goddess was Nemesis.
She was believed to be the very personification of reverence for moral law. Nemesis called
you to virtue. That's how the Greeks viewed her. And, they said, she is, first of all,
the personification of reverence for moral law, and she is, last of all, the angel of
vengeance. And she will, in the end, overtake you with full retribution for all your reckless
transgressions. There is a graphic image of Nemesis that has survived the ages and it
depicts a man, it's actually a picture that has a man running, fleeing in terrified fear.
A thousand sins are pursuing this tormented soul like a hurricane coming after him. His
eyes in the image are bulging out of their sockets in terror, and behind him is swiftly
flying Nemesis, racing with a flashing sword lifted in her hand ready to strike him dead.
And that's conscience. That's conscience. Even the troubled Lord Byron, whose life was
loaded with sin, wrote a poem about Nemesis. Quote, "O thou who never yet of human wrong
left the unbalanced scale, great Nemesis, thou didst call the furies from the abyss,
and bid them howl and hiss." The conscience has a bully function in your life. It can
be the most relentless, the most disturbing, it can be the enemy of the sinning soul and
should be. Or it can be your truest friend, your truest comforter. And that is true of
a holy heart. It accuses or it excuses. Holiness begins in there with the conscience. The pursuit
of holiness is not a matter of trying to structure your life a different way. It's not a matter
of trying to change the outside. If that's all you do, you're a hypocrite. It's a cover-up.
The sinfulness of society today, and the sinfulness of the church, the sinfulness of pastors and
leaders, I believe, is due to faulty function in the conscience. Now, I'm not through. I have more things to
say about this conscience, and I am going to cycle back through some things as I go
because I want you to really understand this. Conscience is the soul's warning system. It
is the gift of God, listen to me, built into every human soul, not just Christians, everybody
has one. It is that inner voice that senses moral violation, and even the pagans have
some knowledge of moral law, do they not? It's in the fabric of being human. It's part
of the imago Dei. It's part of the image of God. Conscience is a constituent part of human
nature. Everybody has one. A Hindu has one, and it functions in response to the highest
level of moral law the Hindu believes. The Buddhist has one. The Muslim has one. The
other day, I had an hour conversation with a humanistic atheist. And he told me how he'd
lived his moral life because he didn't want to violate his conscience. Everybody has one.
It is a constituent part of human nature. It is informed by the highest level of moral
law that one believes. I must add, however, that the conscience, as important as it is,
is not perfect because it is a constituent part of our human nature and therefore it
too is fallen. And that's why, ultimately, the apostle Paul has to say, in 1 Corinthians
4, "Even when I know nothing against myself herein am I not justified."
Because my conscience is fallen, like the
rest of me, it never will be the ultimate determiner of my true spiritual condition.
But, still, it's the best we have. Flawed by the curse, it's all we have. And strengthened
by grace, and strengthened by the Holy Spirit, it is still capable of saying, "Pull up! Pull
up! Pull up!" To reject the voice of conscience is suicide. It's only a matter of time. You
lose it on the inside, you will crash. The conscience, to say it another way, is
the soul reflecting on itself -- something animals can't do; that's what distinguishes
us from animals. Both Greek terms for "conscience" indicate that. So does the English word. It's
"knowledge along with." It's the soul reflecting on itself. It's the ability to know yourself,
to be self-aware, to contemplate, to comprehend, thoughts, motives, intentions, feelings. It's
the faculty that allows you to make moral evaluations. And when people stop doing that,
their behavior becomes "unconscionable." Have you heard that word? The conscience is not
to be equated with the voice of God. It is not the voice of God. It is not to be equated
with the law of God, or the Word of God. It is not. It is a mechanism of humanity, of
the human soul. And to function properly, this is very important, it must have the right
information. The radar on the airplane sent back the right information. And the conscience
must have the right information. If conscience is to function the way God designed it -- if
it is the human faculty which adjudicates upon human behavior and human thought -- then
it is best served, if it functions, under the light of the highest, purest, truest moral
law. And where do we find that? In the Word of God. In the Word of God. You see, conscience
functions like a skylight, not a lamp. It doesn't have a light of its own. It can only
let light through. It's not the source of light. It doesn't produce its own light. It
can only let light into the soul. And, therefore, it needs to have the right information. Its
usefulness is determined by the amount of pure light passing through it. So a fully
functioning conscience, then, is fully informed by the truth of God's word. And with full
information, knowing the way it really is -- that is, understanding spiritual reality,
because it understands the law of God -- it then sends the right message, and when the
conscience says, "Pull up! Pull up! Pull up!" that is what you must do, because that is
reflecting the reality of divine truth. When David said, "Thy word have I hid in my heart
that I might not" what? "sin." He knew exactly what he was saying. He wanted a fully informed
conscience. When Jesus said, "Sanctify them to the Father by Thy word, by Thy truth. Thy
Word is truth," he knew exactly what he was saying. Holiness comes as a result of the
process of the Word of God informing the conscience, and conscience informing the person. The Bible
is that true standard. And the radar is accurate. And when your conscience is fully, carefully,
accurately, completely informed by the Word of God, then it can operate at maximum level.
And that's critical. That's critical. Just to illustrate how that the conscience
itself is not the law of God, if you read a number of places in Paul's writings, but
I'm thinking of Romans 14, that section goes into chapter 15, there are weak Christians
who have a conscience that's not informed in a mature way, right? They have scruples
where they don't need to have them, 1 Corinthians 8. Their conscience won't let them do some
things that they really would be free to do. What do you do? What do you do? Paul makes
a great illustration of this in 1 Corinthians. He says, "Let's say you go to dinner some
night, and you've taken a brand-new believer. And this believer's just been saved out of
paganism, and you're going to go evangelize another pagan. And you take your friend there,
and you go to this pagan's house. And you're the mature Christian, and he's the weak brother
along with you. And they come out, and they serve you dinner. And this weak brother says,
"By the way, where'd you buy this meat?" And the host says, "Well, I bought it over at
the Diana meat market." You know, associated with the temple of Diana." That's meat offered
to idols! And the young believer says, "I can't eat this!" Because he's just come out
of that! He can't deal with that! What are you going to do? Are you going to offend the
host? Or are you going to offend the weaker brother?" You know what Paul says in 1 Corinthians?
He says offend the host. Offend the host. Better that that pagan should see your love
for your brother than your love for him. And better that you not teach that weak Christian
to violate his conscience because, down the road when it gets fully informed, you don't
want him in the habit of not listening to it. It's better, by far, to teach young believers
the truth patiently rather than to tell them, "Violate your conscience." Very dangerous
habit. So, a fully functioning conscience depends on the truth informing it which is
God's Word. Let me tell you something, make it real practical. You take a church where
the truth of the Word of God is replaced by psychology, where it's replaced by entertainment,
where it's replaced by cleverness, where it's replaced by stories and cultural cuteness;
you take a church like that, and the harvest will be unholiness. Because the conscience
has no help. And then try to fix the problem with counseling, self-help, and recovery programs.
It's Band-Aids on cancer, isn't it? Satan has always assaulted the Bible, not only so
that it can hinder the work of justification but even sanctification, as if they could
be hindered. Satan always seeks a diminished presence of Scripture. Sermonettes for Christianettes
please him just fine. I was meeting with a publisher recently who said to me, "The trend
in Bible study books is plummeting like this, while trivial Christian fiction has taken
off like the proverbial rocket." So we can expect a sinful church. There are really two ways to assure that people
are unholy. Misinform their conscience. Twist, pervert, moral law. That's the first way,
and that's what we're talking about. And frankly, the standard for morality in our culture is
falling faster than the NASDAQ, isn't it? When your cultural hero is Eminem you know
how far you've fallen. And you have a whole generation of people being raised with a diminished
moral understanding. Evolution has taken over our society. There is no God. Life is random.
Truth is relative. There's no fixed moral standard. Man is basically good, etc. etc.,
etc. They had a thing on MTV on the seven deadly sins which showed up on the PBS channel.
I don't watch MTV, but it was on PBS. It was a two-hour special on morality in which the
MTV people took the seven deadly sins -- the medieval list, you know, of those motivational
sins: pride, lust, covetousness, anger, envy, gluttony, and sloth or laziness -- and they
surveyed the people in the MTV world, and asked them what they thought about those things.
And essentially, they all came out with the idea that all those things are basically good.
They're good. And the end of it, and here's the last line, and I've quoted it, "No sin
is, if you want to talk about sin," they said, "what would you define as sin?" They said
this, "No sin is as evil as the killjoy attitude of those who think someone's behavior is an
offence to some holy God." End quote. Now that is the morality that we're being taught
in our culture today. And so, what does the conscience have to respond to? Everything
is perverted. As Isaiah said, "Bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Light for darkness
and darkness for light." It is so deadly to misinform the conscience that it can become
convoluted to the point where, Paul said, "their glory is in their shame." Isn't that
an amazing statement? Their conscience is so misinformed! If you want holiness in your
life, you must inform your conscience with the truth of God! Because if your mind, and
what you think and believe is defiled, you're going to fall into that category of Titus
1:15, "Both their mind and conscience are then defiled." They go together. There's a second thing that I want to mention.
There's a second way to destroy the work of conscience. The first way is to misinform
it. Don't tell it the truth. Don't give it the true law of God. The second way is to
silence it when it speaks like the pilot did. This, Paul talked about a "calloused" conscience.
He talked about a "wounded" conscience. He talked about a "seared" or "scarred" conscience.
And you know, that's really been a massive effort in our society today. The erasing of
guilt, right? "Oh, don't feel guilty! Guilt is BAD!" This long list of psychologists,
and gurus, and everybody else trying to turn off the switch so that when you feel guilt,
they want to know that's illegitimate. You need to learn to suppress those feelings of
guilt, to overrule those feelings of guilt, to silence those feelings of guilt. You need
to know guilt is BAD! Shame is WORSE! And self-esteem is the only acceptable self-evaluation.
Everything from ADD to violent adult behavior is attributed to some low self-esteem. And
our whole society is saying, "Shut up, gringo!" to the conscience. We don't want to make people
face their sin. A guy named Dyer wrote a book called Your Erroneous Zones. I quote, "Guilt
must be exterminated, spray-cleaned, and sterilized forever." Don't do that. Feel the pain of
your sin. Feel the guilt of your sin. Charles Wesley wrote over 6,000 hymns. One that I've
never sung, and I've never heard sung, is a hymn he wrote about the conscience. Listen
to it. And this was his plea for a sensitive conscience: "I want a principle within
of watchful, godly fear, a sensibility of sin,
a pain to feel it near. Help me the first approach to feel
of pride or wrong desire, to catch the wandering of my will,
and quench the kindling fire. From Thee that I no more may stray
no more Thy goodness grieve, grant me the filial awe, I pray,
the tender conscience give. Quick as the apple of an eye,
O God, my conscience make; awake my soul when sin is nigh,
and keep it still awake." Great, isn't it? Pleading for a sensitive
conscience that feels the first kindling fire of "lust conceiving," as James put it. Whatever
people do, by the way, to silence their conscience. Temporary. Nobody's conscience would be silenced
forever. Conscience will, in the end, turn on the sinner with a vengeance. Where? In
hell. Why do you think they are weeping, and wailing, and gnashing their teeth? Conscience
will become the chief tormentor of the damned. And it will not be misinformed, and it will
not be silent. It will remind the damned in hell that they alone are responsible for the
eternal agonies they suffer. John Flavel wrote in the 17th century, "Conscience, which should
have been the soul's curb here on earth, becomes the whip that must lash his soul in hell.
Neither is there any faculty or power belonging to the soul of man so fit and able to do it
as his own conscience. That which was the seat and center of all guilt now becomes the
seat and center of all torment." No rest. No peace. Just weeping, wailing, gnashing
of teeth. And conscience will forever make the sinner admit the truth of every charge
it brings, and the justice of every pain he suffers. On the other hand, for those of us who are
redeemed, at the moment of salvation -- I love this -- Hebrews 10:22 says, "The believer's
soul is washed from an evil conscience." The ninth chapter, I think it's verse 14 says
that He cleanses our conscience with His blood. So, with the conscience washed, with the conscience
cleansed, sanitized by the Holy Spirit, informed by the Word of God, the believer can react
to its warnings, and sin can be dealt with where it must be dealt with -- on the inside.
Now I want you to go back to verse 12. And I'm going to stop in just a few moments. I
don't know what time I'm supposed to stop, but I'll do it in a few moments. Why is Paul
boasting here? Why is he defending himself? I'll tell you why. Because there was a group
of false teachers who had come into the Corinthian church. That church caused him no end of pain,
as you know. But the worst of it was going on now because false teachers had come there
and, of course, they want to replace Paul. They wanted to teach their lies, their damning
heresies. In order to successfully do that, they had to somehow depose Paul. They had
to knock him off the chief seat. He was the reigning teacher, shepherd, pastor, etc. so,
in order for them to teach lies, they had to destroy his credibility. So they came into
the church -- you can read between the lies, lines in 2 Corinthians -- and you know this,
that they were assaulting and attacking him. Terrible things. They were saying -- and you
can put this together by reading 2 Corinthians -- they were saying that when he suffered
as much as he did he was suffering because God was punishing him for his sin. They said
that in the first chapter in verse 6, essentially. They said in chapter 1 verse 17, when you
read between the lines, that he was untrustworthy. They said he was not truthful. They said he
was a huckster. They said he lacked official papers from Jerusalem; he was unauthorized.
They said he was secretly corrupt, chapter 4; that he had a hidden life of shame below
the surface. They said that he was a deceiver, he was deceptive. They said he was proud.
They said he was mentally imbalanced, even. They said he was manipulative; that he was
taking advantage of them for sex and money. That's implied in the fifth chapter. And they
said he was dishonorable. They said he was weak. They said his presence was contemptible
and his speech was the same. They were really going after him. And he needed to defend himself,
as hard as it was to do it. He hated to do it. But he needed to do it, not for his own
sake, not for his own ego's sake, but for the sake of the truth. How does he respond?
Does he write back and say, "Hey folks. I'm sending you 25 letters commending me from
25 different people. They'll tell you what a good guy I am." I was flying across country one time, and
I happened to run into a drunk pastor, a prominent media pastor. And we had a very interesting
discussion on the airplane and, I think, one of the most interesting flights of my life.
And when I got home, within a couple of weeks I received a letter from him and a stack of
about six or eight letters from his staff telling me what a wonderful person he was.
And I know he put that all in the file in case I ever said anything about that incident,
which I never have, he would be able to pull them out and say, "Well I don't know what
he's talking about!" And he was profane, even, in the conversation. Paul didn't need letters.
I suppose he could've said, "Well, you know, we've appointed an ad hoc committee, and they're
going to assess me and give a full report in several months about my virtue." He didn't
say that either. You know what he said? I love this. Go back to verse 12. "For our proud
confidence is this: the testimony of our" what?, what? "conscience." Isn't that good?
That is the highest human court, my friend. You can't get any higher than that. That's
not the court of God, but that's the highest human court. "With all you've said," Paul
says, "with all you've said, I will tell you that, on the inside, I have lived my life
in holiness and godly sincerity. Not out of fleshly wisdom but in the grace of God and,
by that, we have conducted ourselves in the world, and especially toward you. You can
say all you want to say, and I will tell you the battle is won by the grace of God in my
conscience." Isn't that great? It's where you have to win the battle, my friend. That's
where you win it. That was repeatedly Paul's testimony. Act 23:1, "Brethren, I have lived
my life with a perfectly good conscience before God up to this day," he said to the Sanhedrin.
Acts 24:16, to Felix, "I do my best to maintain always a blameless conscience before God and
before men." 2 Timothy 1:3, "I thank God, whom I serve with a clear conscience." Can
you say that? "Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts," wrote Peter, "and have a good conscience." Father, we thank you that sin is most likely
mortified when conscience is satisfied. May we love the truth, fully inform our conscience
with it, and pull up when it tells us; that our lives might be to the praise of your glory.
Amen.
