Your Conscience and Your Character

John Adams. He was, I believe, the third President of the United States. He was a member of the Continental Congress that formed and began working towards the independence of this nation from the British back in the mid-1770s. That took an enormous amount of work, which was all volunteer, was all at their own expense. John Adams lived a long way from Philadelphia, where most of the work was going on, and it required him to be away from his beloved wife, Abigail. And in a sense, that's a blessing for you and me, because John Adams and his wife, Abigail, were inseparable friends and mates. And their correspondence through letters has mostly been preserved down through this time, along with much of his other writing. John Adams was probably the most respected member in the Congress, a man of incredible ethics. In reading the biographies and also the things that he has written himself, I never tire of seeing the incredible wisdom and, in a sense, godly, principled person that he was up to a point. John cared deeply for Abigail. To no one was he more devoted than Abigail, whom he called his best, dearest, wisest, worthiest friend in the world. And Abigail referred to him as the tenderest of husbands, my good man, she called him. What a delightful couple, as they went through years and years of correspondence, sometimes with him over in France, developing an alliance with the French in order to ultimately defeat the British.

One of the things that he wrote was this statement. On the stage of life while conscience claps, let the world hiss. When your conscience is clapping, go ahead and let the world hiss at you. On the contrary, if conscience disapproves, the loudest applause of the world are of little value. Now there is an individual who was in touch with his conscience and knew the value of it. All humans are led, to a degree, by conscience. However, there is a downside to conscience and one that we need to be aware of. I became greatly aware of this as a young boy in the late 1950s, sitting in a movie theater, when Jiminy Cricket sang the song, Whistle, give it a little whistle, and always let your conscience be your guide, at which time my parents erupted in, No! No! That's wrong! That should not be! And as a little boy, I began being taught something about conscience. Watch out for that conscience. Don't always let your conscience be your guide.

Some do better than others with their conscience. An example is John Adams. He was admirable. He was very quotable. I've enjoyed reading about him, and after finally finishing what I've read, I found out I'm related to him. He's a distant cousin.

However, John Adams, though he was honest, and everyone knew it and principled, and everyone respected him for it, turns out he was also selfish, angry, but he was forgiving. In other words, his conscience took him so far, didn't it?

But it didn't take him all the way. What is conscience? Conscience is an interesting thing. We are very complex humans, and our minds are very complex, and to all of this, God has put something in us called a conscience that is very unique. It's unique to any other living thing.

It's a curious feature that God has placed in us. An example of conscience can be seen in Acts 24, verse 14. The Apostle Paul notes the value of his conscience, and he pays attention to this thing that God created. As he stands before important people, making important ethical statements, he says these words, Acts 24, verse 14. But this I confess to you that according to the way, that was the term that was used before Christianity became popular, according to the way which they call a sect, so I worship the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the law and in the prophets. I have hope in God that there will be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and the unjust. So he's convinced of all of these things, and he lives by the word of God. Now, notice verse 16. Notice Paul isn't saying, I always strive to follow my conscience and always let it be my God, but rather he actually is striving to develop a conscience, to have a conscience that is developed without offense towards God and man.

Today, let's take a look at this noble, internal guide that God has given us. God made it. It helps us connect with Him. It helps us connect with performing, actually, His way. It helps us to develop, ultimately, character, godly character, so that He can truly be a Father. He can be an originator of our nature, the nature that we're trying to develop. Conscience is a fantastic thing, but how noble is it? How noble is the conscience? What is your conscience like? Even more important, like Paul referred to, what should it be like? I'd like to examine a most interesting compound in the human mind. It's kind of an autopilot. It's something that gives us steerage. It gives us potential guidance every second of the day with our every thought. It's always on alert, checking and sensing.

Going back to the 1970s, a new feature came into automobiles. This feature had been attempted in various forms in previous years. The throttle was a precursor of it, especially on farm machinery or machinery that ran constantly for a long time. Nobody liked to keep their foot on a gas pedal, so they invented this throttle linkage that had a little friction to it. You could pull out and make the engine run at a certain RPM, unless you started up a hill. It essentially gave it a certain mixture of air and fuel, and you thought it would give you a constant speed, but it really never did. Anything that impacted that vehicle would change the speed, though the air and the mixture would be about the same. The air and the fuel mixture would be about the same. So it was kind of a clunky thing. People would put them on their cars. You could mount one on the dashboard, and going down the road in your pickup truck, you could pull out the throttle and say, Okay, I want to be about that speed. And that worked fine. You'd take your foot off the gas until you went up a hill, or even worse, down a hill. Slow up and speed up going down. Besides, when you got into trouble and you wanted that thing off all of a sudden, well, now you had to start finding how to get the gas off. One day somebody came up with a concept of the cruise control.

A magnet and a sensor off the drive shaft would then regulate through a vacuum assembly, pressure, or lack of it, on the accelerator, and you didn't have to touch it yourself to keep that magnet spinning at the same speed on the drive shaft. Thus, the little new invention was born, and you had a cruise control that would keep you essentially at the same speed. Wonderful invention. Remember, in the 1980s, somebody told me that a relative of theirs had gotten a cruise control in his RV. This was down in Arkansas, where it was pastoring at the time, and a person was on the interstate, not far out of Little Rock, and this new RV just picked it up and put on the cruise control. Sure enough, it held it not only at the right speed, but as they went down this straight highway, it kept it in the lane. Look at that! Staying right in the lane. This is an autopilot. So he got up and went in the back and made himself something to eat.

You know, some people assumed it could do things it couldn't. And you can imagine what happened in that situation. The man lived through it, but the vehicle did not. And so we have a feature in our nature that helps us as well. It's a handy little thing called a conscience. This afternoon, as we were driving, my wife was driving the car and she put it on cruise control. A handy little feature. The problem was, though, when the cruise control said it didn't quite set to the right speed, as I noticed. And so she had to adjust it, take it off, and change the speed, or hit a button, and let it go again. Then it still wasn't quite the right speed, so another adjustment went and that worked pretty well. Whoops! Here comes a hairpin corner on the dead cow road and had to take that thing off for a little bit. So it's a great feature, but it has to be adjusted and it has to be monitored. You can't just sort of let it do what it wants to do all the time. I'd like to notice in Acts 23 how Paul did something similar with his conscience. It's not just something that you say, okay, I've got a conscience, I'll just let my conscience go in any situation. Notice in Acts 23, verse 1, then Paul, looking earnestly at the counsel, said, Men and brethren, I have lived in all good conscience before God until this day. Remember what we read just a little bit ago that Paul said, how he tried to do that? Well now he's saying, I have lived in all good conscience before God until this day. But wait a minute, that was then. This is now. Every day brings new circumstances. Just because yesterday you might have done well, today's a new day. Just because the conscience might have been really good in doing some steering or some curging yesterday, today's a new day.

Verse 2, and the high priest Ananias commanded those who stood by Paul to strike him on the mouth. Then Paul said to him, using his conscience, God will strike you, you white-washed wall, for you sit to judge me according to the law, and do you command me to be struck contrary to the law? It felt right to Paul, didn't it? Conscience says, this is good. Paul said it. Verse 4, those who stood by said, do you revile God's high priest? Wait a minute, here I am on cruise control. Suddenly, situation, do you revile God's high priest? Paul's response, verse 5, I didn't know, brethren, that he was the high priest, for it is written, you shall not speak evil of a ruler of your people. It reminded me so much of Mary working the cruise control in the situations and the corners, you see. This thing has to be managed, it has to be monitored, it has to be turned on or off or adjusted depending on what the input is given. Handy device, just as Paul said, I have lived in all good conscience, but I have to stay on top of this thing.

There is such a thing as an autopilot. Some of them are coupled, some of them are not. Some of you have GPS, talking GPS units in your cars. These are not coupled to your steering yet. Some test cars, they are. They'll drive you around and you don't have to really touch anything. But they still give you the monitoring and the ability to kill the thing, even in the test cars. But I call ours Lucy because she just never shuts up. And she says, turn left, turn left! Well, wait a minute. When I'm driving between Alpine and I forget the other town. Oh, where is it? South of Alpine. There's a little town. You go through these woods and everything. Well, Lucy says, turn left. Well, if I turn left at 60 miles an hour, I'd be driving through a forest. Lucy says, there's a road there. There's no road there. Turn left. Ten minutes later. Oh, turn left. In fact, she doesn't even see that I'm on the right road. See, she says the road's over there a half a mile. She thinks I'm driving through the forest. If I just coupled that to my car, I'd be dead. Can't do that. You kind of have to say, well, Lucy's saying I ought to be driving somewhere else. But you know what? I think in this situation, it's better to stay on the highway instead of drive through the trees. I'm going to stick with that. The same with aircraft. Autopilots and aircraft are wonderful things. You program an autopilot. It couples with all of the flight stuff. You get airborne, you hit the autopilot, and it flies from point to point. It takes the altitude you assigned it. It'll even take the speed that you assigned it. And it takes the route that you've been authorized to fly from point to point to point. It's a wonderful thing, as long as it works. I've been in an airplane, punched on the autopilot, and had to go, nah! You know, we'd be dead, augured in. Sometimes the autopilot might misfunction, might decide to take you somewhere else. You don't just sort of hit the autopilot and let her be. Same with boats. The GPS's will connect to a boat's navigational system, and they're wonderful. It'll take you around buoys, it'll take you around reefs, it'll take you where you want to go. But you shouldn't just go down and go to sleep in the boat. You really ought to monitor the thing. Because you just never know. You never know it might have an issue. GPS for hiking is the same. It has the trail, and it tells you nicely where you should be going and everything, but they're not always right. Sometimes the database in these things are a little out of whack. I'll be hiking along, looking at this thing and saying, you know, it says to go this way, but if I do, there's a cliff. I don't think the guy who wrote this trail into the software got it just right. Good idea, though. I know we're generally going around here, but you have to watch these things, you see? You have to watch them. It's kind of like your conscience. Everything needs editing. It needs updating. It needs refreshing from time to time. Webster's defines conscience as a combination of Latin words to know and to gather. Don't think that your GPS knows everything. It needs to gather. Don't think that your conscience knows everything, because it also, along with knowing, it gathers. It gathers. The Greek word translated conscience over 30 times in the New Testament means the self that knows or observes about itself. The conscience is a really interesting thing. It knows itself, but it also observes itself. It knows what you believe, and then it watches you to see if you're doing what you believe. It's the most curious thing. It is a real link with us and godliness and developing character.

It's kind of like the little GPS. It knows where you are, and then it assesses where you are, and then it tells you, No, wait, turn around, go back. In Bible study course number eight, a statement is made. Our conscience is merely what we believe to be right or wrong. It's not necessarily what is right or wrong. When we violate our conscience, we are doing something we think we shouldn't. And thus, we are compromising with what we think is wrong. That's a good thing up to a point, depending on how your conscience is programmed.

But what programs your conscience? Well, we have two possibilities, human-based programming or godly programming. It's not one of the other, it's both. There's a whole lot of stuff in your conscience of both. And that's where we have to be careful with our conscience. We can't just say, Okay, I'm in the church, I've been in the church a while, I believe the truth, my conscience says something, I'm good to go. Not so. Not so. Our conscience is based on these two things. Let's examine, first of all, human-devised ethics, which we can feel very strongly about. The most common source in a human of human-devised ethics is what your mother taught you before age 6, say some psychologists. In other words, essentially, your ethics, your conscience, is what mama told you when you were growing up as a child. Now that's good, depending on what your mama told you. Secondarily, others say, no, it's much more than that, it is also what society and what education and the values of society have told you. It's a complete combination of all of those things that are always being adjusted.

Education, entertainment, what your friends think, what society puts forth, what you hear, what you see, what is convincing, what sounds logical, what your mom taught you, what your dad taught you, all these things swirl into the mix along with what you may pick up from the church. Let's notice this in Romans 2 and verse 12. Romans 2 and verse 12. Paul says, For as many as have sinned without law will also perish without law, and as many as have sinned in the law will be judged by the law. Verse 14, For when Gentiles, those who are not descendants of the twelve tribes of Israel, those who are not under the great law that God gave to those tribes, when they who do not have the law, by nature do the things in the law, yes, people say it's good not to kill, it's good not to lie, it's good not to steal. And so by nature, when they do the things in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law unto themselves. In other words, people come up with their own ethics from all kinds of sources. Verse 15, Who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them. That's what you end up with with an individual who has a self-devised conscience. Some of it may be included, the laws that are found in the Bible, some may not. And they, being themselves the law, as it were, their conscience will either excuse them or accuse them. On their own basis. It's a very self-determined path that accompanies a conscience. You know the scripture that says, there is a way that seems right. Why does it seem right? Conscience says, this is the right way. There's a way that seems right to a man, but the end thereof, the ways of death.

So self-programming is not going to get us where we want to go. An example, truth, religion, kingdom of God. There's lots of ideas out there. Lots of ideas. People are very convicted about them.

Let's go to 1 Corinthians 8 and verse 7. 1 Corinthians 8 and verse 7. You can see a person who is a religious person in the church can have a conscience leading them into things that are not appropriate.

1 Corinthians 8 and 7. It is not everyone, however, who has this knowledge. It's not everyone in the church who has the knowledge of the truth, because we can be convicted of things by our previous background, by our previous religions. Think of the individuals there in Corinth who maybe their favorite god or goddess was Diana or Thor or Mercury. They grew up with this and it was entrenched in their life going on. Since some have become so accustomed to idols until now, it's just part of their conscience. There are certain things that you just can't do. It's just not right because the idol says, you know, Diana or Hercules or Thor or somebody says, don't do that.

Some have become so accustomed to idols until now, they still think of the food they eat as offered to an idol.

And their conscience being weak is defiled. They can't get over the fact that that was to the goddess Diana, when in fact there never was a goddess Diana. That's a figment. That's a fairy tale. That's an imagined thing. And there never was a Thor or Mercury or anybody else. But they can't get past the fact that, oh, the goddess Diana, who today is Mother Mary, Queen Mother of Heaven, taken on many names down through time, Isis and other names. Anyway, they can't get past.

It sticks, doesn't it? Their conscience being weak is defiled if they say, oh, here's some food that was sacrificed over on the altar of Diana at that temple, and therefore I can't touch it because of the goddess.

What is in your conscience that's self-devised?

Loving your mate. Where did you get how you relate to your mate? If you go back far enough, back to Victorian times, there was a very different mentality that came out of England. It was very separated between husbands and wives. Men didn't speak to women. Women didn't speak to men. The two had separate lives, even though they were in the same house. Nothing really intimate or bonding would take place in that life. Now, mothers taught their children these values. Is that godly? Is that what we read of in the Bible? What was John doing, leaning on Jesus's shoulder, on his chest, his breast, at the supper? Why was Jesus crying and showing emotion for Jerusalem? Why was Song of Solomon so passionate? Where do we get some of the things that we have in our minds when it comes to intimacy? Some of these things come from what we are taught. Some say, no display of affection around anybody else. That's one mentality. Now let's look at the flip side. There's another ditch we can jump in, and that's fornication. Any and everybody. You can do anything with anybody, anytime, every time. That's just the way it is. You just come another hundred or so years down the line, and the conscience says, oh yeah, it's fine. Anything's fine. Anything goes.

I had to argue with one or more young adults in the church a few years ago that premarital relations between any singles was wrong, according to the Bible. The individuals argued that it was fine, and the Bible was silent on the topic because it only mentioned adultery in the Ten Commandments. It didn't mention if you weren't married. So they were free to just cohabit with any and everybody, anytime. And there was no conscience about it whatsoever. It was just fine.

Today we find some modern cultural norms that are just a searing of a conscience to where whatever God says doesn't even relate somehow. You know, humans want to get, and they make allowances for that. And in making allowances for getting what they want, they'll sear the conscience with a hot iron the Bible talks about, to where that doesn't raise up any objections anymore. Society lowers the bar to get what it wants, and the bar gets lower and lower and lower. And then consciences are adjusted to match the lowered bar. People just have no bad feelings about what they do. I mean, look at Columbine. Look at children murdering children and how often this now happens without even a thought, without any feeling or compulsion that it might be wrong. Gangs going in drive-by shootings of children, women, anybody. It's thoughtless violence that has been pushed on television since the mid-1960s of just gratuitous, over-the-top, casual, thoughtless violence has so saturated and permeated the entertainment industry, video game industry, just so many things that desensitize, and now there's little conscience in some people. Think of suicide bombers. What would a woman strapping herself with a suicide bomb and going into a schoolyard full of little children of her own people and blowing them all up? What's going on? There's no sense of conscience, and this gets worse and worse. A gang member saw a float from the high school prom coming down the street with the queen in her court, lovely ladies, and he sprayed the float with bullets. The police asked him, why did you do that? He said, I need some jail time. I'm getting behind on my medicine. I need a checkup, and I've got a tooth that needs a filling. Besides, he says, I need some jail time for an opportunity to develop some respect in the gang. I'm just happily telling the police this. Where is conscience?

There's another input of conscience, and that is God-devised ethics. Not just human-devised, from mama and society and myself getting what it wants, but God-devised ethics. And this is what needs to rise to the top in us. We are told to repent. In Romans 6, we're told that the old man needs to die, and a new man needs to rise up and walk in newness of life. Philippians 2, 13 says, For it is God who works in you, both to will and to do, for his good pleasure. He is going to now encourage and be a father, be a mentor to you, to will and to do godliness. Does a godly person have a godly conscience? No, not totally. Does a member of the church have a godly conscience? Not no, not totally, partially? Sure. But you remember what all went into our conscience? There's a lot of stuff in there. Some of it needs to get worked out. We're impacted, our conscience is impacted, and it's also adjusted by many different values that we choose to accept.

The Bible says, Let him who thinks he stands. How do you think you stand? Your conscience tells you whether you think you stand. I'm doing well because my conscience doesn't condemn me. Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. Why? Because that conscience is not a done deal. It's not finished developing. It's like the guy in the RV going down the freeway. He looks at the cruise control and thinks, Hmm, I think we're good for a sandwich here. Take heed lest you fall. It isn't trustworthy, the conscience isn't.

It's a help, but it's not trustworthy. It's a helpful gauge, but it's not absolute truth. It needs to be developed, needs to change, needs to be edited. It needs constant repentance, proper input. Ephesians 4, verses 22 through 24 includes these statements. Be renewed in the spirit of your mind. Sometimes the database in your GPS needs to be deleted and updated, needs to be renewed.

Mine doesn't have the 202 loop in it. It's missing a few streets where some of you live. When I go to Mrs. Pretterati's house, I'm driving out through desert, according to my GPS, has no idea where I am. But for $39.95, I can connect this thing to the Internet and have its mind renewed. I just don't have $39.95 right now. So I do a lot of driving out through a so-called desert and forests and other things like that.

But it needs to be renewed. Be renewed in the spirit of your mind and put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. We need to update our nature. We need to improve our ethics and what we really stand for. And not just feel good about things, because God has never finished with us. We're His workmanship. He is a Father that's crafting and molding us.

He's creating us in true righteousness, not our version of righteousness, but true righteousness. We need to know what that is. We need to internalize that and reprogram our conscience. And then we can develop His character. There's two ways that God influences our conscience and our character. One is through His Word, the other is through His Spirit. In 1 Timothy 1 and verse 5 regarding His Word, it says, Now we notice there a couple of things.

And one is that conscience is in all. It's not the, sort of, put it on autopilot and you're good to go. No? The purpose of God's Bible, His Word, and the commandments that flow from it, is love from a pure heart, from our active thinking, active doing. From a good conscience, yeah, that can be a helpful tool in that, and from a sincere faith, God's faith in us.

But in between, in between that pure heart and sincere faith, is a conscience that helps us. It's their scanning, it's their looking, evaluating, it's got a certain amount of knowledge, but it also is searching and seeking and assessing. And it's a very helpful tool as far as its reliability goes. Paul says that we need to be complete, thoroughly equipped, for every good work by reading God's Word. And regarding God's Holy Spirit living in us, let's go to Ezekiel 36 and verse 26 and 27.

Ezekiel chapter 36 and verse 26. Here we'll see that God is trying to put something in us, and through His Holy Spirit, here's what happens. Ezekiel 36 and 26. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. In a sense, that means we've got to get rid of what that conscience was established when we were children, the material, the ethics, the rules, whatever it was. We've got to, in a sense, clear it out and put it back in right.

It doesn't mean you throw out what your mom says, but you put it out and then you put back in godliness. Let Him put it in. And where your mom said, don't do it, and she was right, keep that. And when she said, you know, eat your little pork hot dogs, or you can have your broccoli, you've got to put that out. And so on and so forth. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you.

I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh. See, one thing's got to be removed. We've got to die to our old way, and I'll give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you will keep my judgments and do them. So it's really God, godliness, coupled with a clean conscience, a godly conscience, and a strong faith that will really propel us, as it did Paul and many other faithful people.

A good example of this is by Paul in Romans 9 and verse 1. He says, I tell the truth in Christ. I am not lying, my conscience also bearing witness by the Holy Spirit.

You see, it wasn't his conscience just bearing witness. It bared witness by the Holy Spirit. The new Revised Standard said, my conscience confirms it by the Holy Spirit. So that conscience needs input from God, not input from society, not input from selfishness, not input from the wise of the world, but input from God living in us. Bible study Course 8 says, if we yield our will to God, He will empower us through the Holy Spirit to live by the principles of righteousness as He defines them in the laws, as He defines them, not as we define them.

See, that's the difference. So the database for our conscience, that little steering mechanism, that double-checking, second-guessing mechanism, needs to come from God and His laws. By the Word, by the Spirit that's in us, that then becomes a compelling guide. So we see then that there are these two competing influences on our conscience, God and really Satan. It requires a constant choice of input, doesn't it? Constant monitoring of the decisions that we make.

We can't just let the thing go and kind of run automatically. The result of having both of these in us is found in Titus 1 and verse 15. Here Paul is talking to the pastor Titus, and this is very important for us to grasp. Titus chapter 1 and verse 15, he says, "...to the pure all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure." Here's how the conscience will sense.

If you are pure, your conscience will say, all these things that you're doing are pure. But to those who are defiled, their conscience has a wrong set of standards in it. Then nothing is pure. They think it's pure, but it's not. It's not pure. But even their minds and consciences are defiled. You see, it's like this little database in my GPS. It's defiled. Just trying to get me to turn off here and turn off there.

You go down the Dead Cow Road. This is some highway in Arizona. I forget the number. We just call it Dead Cow Road, because of all the dead cows that get hit by cars on the road. She doesn't believe the road exists. So it's quite annoying every mile. It's like, turn left. Turn left. Turn right. Turn left. Turn right. I have shut her off. She's defiled. She has a defiled database. Every time she says, turn right or turn left, there's no road there. There's a railroad track running right there. She wants me to turn onto the railroad track. It's defiled. You see? They profess to know God, but in works they deny Him, being abominable, disobedient, and disqualified for every good word.

So Paul here shows how you can have either a pure conscience or a defiled conscience. Or we could have a combination of both. It's up to you and up to me. It's a great tool to have, though. It's up to us to ask God for help to purify our conscience, so that it will be a good tool. It will help us. Now let me ask you a question. Here's a challenging question for you.

Is there ever a time to go against your conscience? In other words, you're going to do something, you're planning to do something, you want to do something, and your conscience says, don't do that. Don't do that. If you do that, it's wrong. Or is there a time to go against your conscience when your conscience says, yes, this is the right thing to do. Do it with gusto. It is right, right, right, right, right.

Does there have time to just say, I'm not going to do what I think is right? Good question, isn't it? That's a scary thought. It's a scary thought. Is there ever a time in a jet airplane when you're running on the autopilot, and it's taking you from point to point, that you want to disengage the autopilot and fly somewhere else? Hmm, that's a scary thought. You know, when you're in the clouds and you can't see anything, you decide, you know what? I think it's wise to not go where the autopilot is going to take me.

It says, go there, go there fast. You can do that in an airplane. You can do it pretty easily. Right on the yoke or the steering wheel, there's a button. And if you push it, it disengages the autopilot. And you can then fly wherever you want to fly at your own risk. Now, the color of the button, guess what color it is? It's red. When you push the button you get an audible horn in the cockpit that can be heard back in the passenger section. It goes, Psssssssssssssssss. Okay. To let you know what, you know, let you know the seriousness of what you have just done, including a few people in first and second row, behind you.

And now, you're on your own. Okay, let's consider this. Is there a time when you should do what your conscience tells you not to do? Or not do what your conscience tells you to do? And the answer is absolutely yes! Of course there is! Your conscience may tell you, you know what? Work into the dark on Friday because it's more money. Your boss tells you to do it. You're going to get fired if you don't do it. It's the right thing to do!

You've done it all your life before you got in this church anyway! You've never seen a God. He's never appeared to you, never heard His voice. You can do this! You can do this! And to not do it, you'd feel like, Oh, I think I'm violating my conscience here. Yes, you should not do what your conscience tells you to do. Is there ever a time when you should do something your conscience tells you not to do?

Okay. You go to the meat market, and they have meat from Diana the goddess, from Horace the god, and from Pluto and Jupiter and Woden and every other day of the week. And maybe an unknown god, too. And your conscience tells you, Don't you eat any of that stuff! Because you used to worship the goddess Diana over there, and that's pretty special stuff. You used to pray, and that was a special deal to you, so you can't have any of that. Let's go to 1 Corinthians 10 and verse 25. We'll get the answer right out of the Bible.

1 Corinthians 10 and verse 25. Here's what Paul tells the church members at Corinth, who are in that very situation, whose conscience are screaming at them, Don't buy that meat! Who cares if it's precooked in half price? Don't buy it! 1 Corinthians 10 and verse 25. Paul says, Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the ground of conscience. Ignore your conscience, he's saying. Isn't that interesting? Well, I'll leave that with you because that's an issue that you're going to have to exercise the responsibility of pushing the red button, and hearing the warning, and saying, I'm really on my own on this one, I really need to make sure.

Do I fly straight ahead and go into the sight of a mountain in the cloud? That I think might be there? I'm not sure. Or do I take it off autopilot and turn into a mountain that I don't know is there? See, the consequences of the decisions we make are very important. Now, conscience will help you to a point, but it depends on what your conscience is based on. Depends on what it's based on. So make sure, brethren, the conscience is based on God's Word and on His Holy Spirit, and nothing else.

If we do that, then the conscience is a wonderful tool. God has put a spirit in man. And within that spirit, God has given us something that's able to influence us, to check us, and to, since, tell us whether we're acting and thinking according to the values that we have. Through it, we're able to have self-awareness, to do that unique thing that no other living thing can do, to analyze our self, our thoughts, to look at ourselves, to know ourselves, to know our feelings.

Realize the importance of a strong, godly motivated conscience. And the more your conscience recognizes God as the ultimate authority, then the more effective that conscience will be in motivating you to perform godly deeds.