Charles Stanley - Can Your Conscience Be Your Guide? (02/28/2017)
In this sermon from 1 Timothy 1:18-19 and related passages, Dr. Stanley warns that many people's consciences are damaged or "seared" by repeated sin, false teaching, or societal reprogramming, leading to spiritual shipwreck. While everyone has a God-given conscience as an alarm for right and wrong, it cannot be blindly trusted unless programmed by God's Word, activated through salvation in Christ, and guided by the Holy Spirit—only then can it reliably direct us toward obedience and away from destruction.
Can You Really Trust Your Conscience?
Can you trust your conscience? You have one. Can you trust it? Do you live by it? You hear people say, "Well, just trust your conscience." Is that a wise thing to do? If it is, why? If it's not wise, why is it not wise?
Can you trust your conscience? Well, that's what I want to talk about in this message, and it's very important. Because if your conscience is not trustworthy, you're headed for trouble. And many people have a conscience that is not trustworthy. And that's why they're in the mess they're in.
They have listened to their conscience, but their conscience has been so damaged, it cannot lead them in the right direction. So, I want you to turn to First Timothy, if you will. And I want us to see what the Scripture teaches here about our conscience.
And Timothy, young Timothy, sent by the Apostle Paul to Ephesus to pastor the church there, and one of his primary responsibilities was to deal with false teachers. So, he says in chapter one, verse two, "To Timothy, my true child in the faith, grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, as I urge you upon my departure from Macedonia, remain only in Ephesus so that you may instruct certain men not to teach strange doctrines."
Paul's Charge to Timothy Against False Teachers
Nor to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies, which give rise to mere speculation, rather than furthering the administration of God, which is by faith. So, he lets him know immediately what his job is. That there are those there who are teaching false doctrine, confusing people, stirring up the church, and causing lots of trouble.
So, he comes down to verse eighteen and he says, "This command I entrust to you, Timothy, my son, in accordance with the prophecies previously made concerning you, that by them you fight the good fight, keeping faith and a good conscience, which some have rejected and suffered shipwreck in regard to their faith."
Among these are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan, so that they will be taught not to blaspheme. Now, in those days, they had the same problem we have today of people teaching false doctrine. And so, he sent him to straighten that out.
And he mentions these two gentlemen here in this particular passage, and he says two things. He says, "Number one, they are those who've been stirring up things, teaching false doctrine." And he says, "He's going to hand them over to Satan."
Now, what do you mean by that? To hand them over to Satan, he meant probably, that is, first of all, they're going to exclude them from the church. And secondly, he's going to pray for God's disciplined hand upon them, whether it's sickness or some kind of disease or whatever it might be, but they need to understand they cannot disobey God and escape the consequences.
Rejecting Conscience Leads to Shipwreck
And so, he says, "I have handed them over to Satan so that they'll be taught not to blaspheme." Now, that doesn't mean that they're lost, but rather that God is going to discipline them very, very strongly because of what's happening in the church and all the problems that they're causing.
And so, when we think about being handed over to Satan, we'd probably think about something else. But we're talking about two men who are causing trouble in the church, and so he said, "Here's what's going to happen."
Because notice what he says about them. He says, "Keeping faith and a good conscience, which some have rejected and suffered shipwreck in regard to their faith." Now, listen carefully. When you step out of the will of God, you're headed for a shipwreck.
God has given us a way to live. It's the best way possible. It's according to His will and His plan for our life. You can't improve on His plan. And so, if we choose to disobey Him and walk another way, we're going to suffer shipwreck. That is, your life is just going to end up being one big mess.
You may get along for a while, but ultimately, the consequences of sin are going to catch up with you. And therefore, this is why he's saying concerning these men. These men are teaching false doctrine. They're teaching people things that are going to mislead them, and therefore, it's going to mean shipwreck for their life.
And so, very seriously, he says here in this passage, you are to confront them and instruct people wisely.
God Gives Everyone a Conscience—But It Gets Programmed
Now, let's think about this whole idea of a conscience for a moment. First of all, simply this. God has granted to every single person a conscience. It's a universal gift of God. Because every person needs a conscience and every baby born has a conscience.
And that is, it's that moral factor, that capacity within them to be able to discern the difference between right and wrong. We come into this world, and God has given every single person a conscience.
Now, that doesn't mean... watch this carefully... that doesn't mean that every conscience works the same. It doesn't mean that everybody who has a conscience would necessarily believe the same.
The conscience is that alarm that goes off within us when we are tempted to do something that is not right, when we head in the wrong direction. It's at the end of sense of something that is wrong.
But now, watch this. That conscience... watch this carefully... that conscience is going to operate on the basis of how it has been programmed. Every single one of us has a conscience, and every single one of us has been and is being programmed.
You say, "Well, what do you mean by that?" When you came into the world, for example, your parents said to you, "You must not do this. You should do this. And if you want to be the kind of person you ought to be, this is what you ought to do."
So, they began to instruct you and to teach you that some things don't belong in your life, and therefore, sometimes they had to do a little discipline on your part in order to help you understand that what they were saying to you is very important.
And so, all of our parents have either taken advantage of that opportunity and instructed us, and what they were doing, they were programming our conscience.
How Society and Media Reprogram the Conscience
Because as a little child, a little child grows up, what's right, what's wrong? Very, very small, you say to them, "Do not touch that base." You turn your back, they're going to do it anyway. Now, do they feel guilty? Yes, they do, because Mom or Dad said, "Don't do it." They did it anyway.
And so, we all grew up with that tendency within us to do what we want to do instead of what God wants to do. So, every single one of us was programmed by our parents.
You say, "Well, listen, my parents didn't program me because they just ignored me." That's part of the programming. And secondly, they didn't program me because they used all kind of foul language, and they talked about cheating people. They didn't program me. That's part of the programming.
The truth is, as we watched our parents growing up, as we listened to people what they did, people we respected, people who were our elders, people who were older than ourselves, we heard all of that. And all of that got deposited in your young mind.
You watched people disappoint you. You watched people who greatly impressed you, as I've talked about our Sunday school teachers and so forth. And so, all of us got programmed. And we're still being programmed.
And the important thing is today, look around at this nation of ours of what's happened. We got programmed many, many years ago by godly men and women who established this nation, where the Bible was respected and honored, and people who went to church, go to church, and who respected and honored God.
Somewhere along the way, we made decisions that were unwise decisions, so let's go back to the Supreme Court, and you think about how much law that they'd studied and how much truth that they learned. And they made a decision to violate their conscience.
Removing God's Laws from Schools—Reprogramming a Nation
Because if any men should have known that to take the Ten Commandments out of a school where little children are growing up and learning and being programmed and learning what's right and what's wrong, why would you want to take them out of the classroom when those Ten Commandments are the basics in the Word of God about how we live?
It teaches us how we're to respond to God, how we're to respond to each other, and how we're to respond to ourselves. What is it about the Ten Commandments that would make them take them out?
Is it because the Ten Commandments says, "Thou shalt not kill"? No. Thou shalt not commit adultery? No. Thou shalt not bear false witness? No. Or you should love God with all your heart? Why do they take it out?
That is, why do we want to begin making this a non-religious nation? Because people began to think, men began to think. Not only does everybody have the privilege of praying when they want to, they don't have to pray. Or the Ten Commandments, why would you want to remove from society the basis of how we get along with each other and how we relate to God?
That decision began the process of reprogramming the whole thought pattern of America. And so now that we have had fifty-some years of that, look where we are. Look at the things that we put up with today. Look at the absolute immoral way people are living.
What's happened, I'll tell you one thing that's happened. The people who promote that have grown up somewhere that their conscience was not programmed in a godly fashion. What I want you to see is how important your conscience is, and secondly, how important it is for you to program your children and your grandchildren in a godly fashion.
And the truth is, here's what's happened. So, once we decided, let's get rid of some of this religion. Let's get rid of this Jesus business, take the cross out, let's pass laws. In other words, what we want to do is we want to reprogram the conscience of America.
And so, we send people to high places of office who are very immoral, who are very dishonest. And so, we have a society, and we ask, "Who can we trust"? And we look around to see what's happening in our nation.
We... listen, whether you recognize or not, we are already under the judgment of God. Look at what's happened in this nation in the last five years. Or even beyond that, a little beyond that. We've decided we don't like the Word of God. We've decided we want to live the way we want to live.
And so, here's what happened. Somebody says, "But don't these people have a conscience?" Yes, I'm going to talk about what happens to the conscience. We are beginning to live in a society that has decided to reprogram their conscience to make it possible for you to live any way you want to live, do anything you want to do, and it be acceptable and approved.
And God hates it because it is... listen, it is throwing in the face of God His laws, rejecting His laws. And I would ask again, what part of the Ten Commandments is bad? You want somebody lusting after your wife or your husband? You want divorce? You want murder? You want lying and stealing and cheating?
In other words, irreverence for God, taking God out of society? Look at where we are. We are where we are because we have allowed ourselves to be reprogrammed.
The Dangers of Media and Cultural Influence
You say, "Well, you know what? They're not... nobody's reprogramming me. Let me prove to you that they are." When you sit in front of a television set week after week after week, year after year, and you listen and you watch, what do you see? Murder, rape, crime of all kinds, divorce, mistreatment of people, dishonesty, stealing, all the things... revolution, marching in the streets, all the things that are going...
You think, "Well, that's not affecting me." It may not be affecting you personally, but here's what happens. Once you violate your conscience to a point, you're on your way to being shipwrecked.
The whole nation will be shipwrecked if we do not change the direction of this country. It's going to happen. We're not talking about something that's so limited to political parties. We're talking about a whole nation's thought patterns. Our whole attitude about life, which is a violation of the Word of God.
And any time you head away from God's Word, there's going to be shipwrecked. So, let's think about, for example, when did it all start? It all started in the Garden of Eden. For example, you remember what God said to Adam and Eve? He said, "The best." In other words, look what He provided for them. The very, very best that Almighty God can provide.
Then He said, "There's one tree that you're not to touch. And that's the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because the day that you do this, you're going to surely die." And so, what was His value system? Now, watch this carefully. What was God's value system? God's value system was obey Him, and you'll have the best of life... that's His value system... obey Him.
They decided to violate His value system, which meant they chose to disobey Him. When they disobeyed Him, what happened? They went and hid themselves. Why did they hide themselves? Because their conscience... their conscience, which had... listen... which had been programmed by God to be obedient, they chose to violate their conscience.
And what happens, that is, here comes the Lord, in whatever fashion He moved in those days, that place, they went and hid themselves because their conscience alarmed them. They had done something wrong, and now the consequences were staring them in the face. That's where it all started.
And all of us have a conscience, and that conscience is either going to be programmed wisely or unwisely.
Romans 1: Suppression of Truth and God's Response
Now, I want you to turn to the first chapter of Romans, because this is a very important chapter. And so, when we think about this whole idea of a conscience, and how it gets programmed, and listen to what God said. Listen to what He says about man, this first chapter of Romans.
He says in verse eighteen, "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness." Watch this carefully, all these verses are important.
"Because," that, that is, God has revealed Himself. He's expressing His wrath. "Because," verse nineteen, "that which is known about God is evident within them, for God made it evident to them." That is, in their conscience. Everybody has a consciousness of God. They can, they can destroy that. They have a consciousness of God.
Notice what He said. "For since the creation of the world, His," that is, God's, "invisible attributes," He's holy, merciful, loving, kind, and so forth. "These attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen being understood through what has been made so that they are without excuse."
The very creation... watch this carefully... the very creation is God's general revelation of Himself. Here's the specific revelation of God. Here's the written revelation of God. The general revelation of God is nature.
So, what do we do? We decide, for example, there is no God and we believe in evolution. The truth is, what the Bible says is that the very creation itself bears witness to man that there is a God. And so, He says there without excuse.
"For even though they knew God, that there was a God, they didn't honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image of... on a form of corruptible man and of birds."
And, He says, "In full-footed animals and crawling things." That is, instead of acknowledging who this God is, the creation is so evident, they chose to do otherwise.
Then listen to what He says. Watch this, "In response to ignoring their conscience." Refusing to listen to God speak to them. Three times He says in this chapter, verse 24, number one, "Therefore God gave them over to the lust of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them."
They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, worshiped, and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Second times He says this, "For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions, for their women exchanged their natural function for that which is unnatural."
And in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman, and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts, and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.
And then somebody tell me that an immoral lifestyle is okay. Here is God's divine condemnation of immoral living. It's His condemnation of it. Listen. "And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer," they seared their conscience. "God gave them over," the third time He says it, "to a depraved mind."
That is a mind that cannot really and truly form right judgments, because it's been going on so long. "To do those things which are not proper." Then He names all these sins, and He comes down to verse 32, and here's what He says, "And although they know the ordinance of God, and those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them."
He says they're without excuse. And here's what I want you to see. We're being programmed in our nation to accept anything and everything anybody wants to do. And the whole idea is, "Well, this is a free country, and I'm a free person, and I don't believe in religion, I don't believe in that God, I can do as I please."
So, I want to show you what has happened to people who believe that. But we are in the most dangerous position we have ever been in because we are reprogramming the minds of young and old alike.
And sitting in front of those televisions year after year and seeing it go on, and seeing people get by with things. And think about this, they make it look so happy and so joyful and so wonderful and so prosperous and so successful and all the rest, which is Satan's lie.
Listen, anything you watch over and over and over and over and over again, you think it's not affecting you? Yes, it is. You may not go out and steal something, but that's the beginning of the thought of being dishonest. And you can just go right down the whole issue of our morality.
We're where we are because we have... we began to be reprogrammed when the Supreme Court took the Ten Commandments out of the school. And listen, kids walked in the school classroom and every day, they didn't stand there and they didn't even have to quote it. They didn't stand there and say, "One, two, three." But they would glance at it, they'd look at it, and when you see that it says, "Do not steal," this is God's Word, "Do not lie, do not covet, do not commit adultery."
In other words, it's there. So, what do you do? If you want to reprogram a nation and destroy it, you reprogram their thinking and their conscience, which is the alarm bell that goes off when there is disobedience toward God. And all of us have one of them. And it can be quieted, which I'll show you in a moment, or it can be very strong, which is what God wants it to be.
The Purpose of Conscience—Not to Guide Alone
Now, somebody says, "Well, okay, I understand that. Then what's the purpose of my conscience?" Is that... watch this carefully... the purpose of your conscience is not to guide you.
You say, "Well, I thought that's what... don't people say, 'Let your conscience be your guide'?" They say that, but that's not the purpose of your conscience. There's not a single verse in the Scripture that says you should be guided by your conscience. Because the conscience is not dependable.
And when you think about... for example, let me give you seven different words. Each one describes the conscience. And you can see the difference in people's conscience.
Number one is what Paul says to Timothy here, and that is a good conscience in First Timothy one, verse nineteen. Then he talks about in Second Timothy one, three, a pure conscience, which is also a good conscience, a clean conscience, you know, I would say.
And when Paul was speaking to the governor about his own life there in Rome, he talked about having a blameless conscience in Acts twenty-four, sixteen. And in First Corinthians chapter eight, verse seven through twelve, when they were... Paul was discovering and discussing the whole idea of what one person does may hurt someone else's conscience, and therefore, he talks about a weak conscience.
And then Titus one fifteen, a defiled conscience. And then an evil conscience. But the one I want us to look at here in First Timothy chapter four, verse two, is a seared conscience.
So, look at that for just a moment. He says in the fourth chapter of First Timothy, "But the Spirit explicitly says that in latter times, some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits," that's what's happening, "doctrines of demons, by means of the hypocrisy of liars, seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron."
And that word in the Greek is cauterize. That's where we get that word from. To cauterize something, to sear it. If you put a piece of wax paper down here and put an iron on top of it, disappears. End of it.
And so, what he's saying here is simply this, and that is that you can't really trust your conscience unless certain things be true. And if you think about it this way, how does a person get in that stage? By saying yes to sin, a little something. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, until finally, what happens?
For example, and probably all of us at some point maybe in our life, and I wouldn't say that's always true, and I don't... I don't have anybody in mind, I'm just saying, for example, we've all been tempted to do things, whatever it might be.
If we listened to our conscience as a child of God, we knew better. And so, the way people get hooked, and whether it's drugs or whatever it might be, is by doing something in which they violate their conscience, and all of them is, "Oh, God, I'm so sorry," and they violated it again. "Oh, God, I wish I hadn't violated it again."
And finally, after time, they violate it so often. Here's what happens. The sound of the warning bell of the conscience gets less and less and less and less and less and less, but they don't even hear it.
And the reason they can't is because their sin over a prolonged period of time has muffled their conscience till they can no longer hear the bell ring anymore. So then they can say, "Well, why can't I drink all I want? Why can't I be on drugs? Why can't I do this? Why can't I do that?" Silence their conscience.
It is a very dangerous thing to sin in any form and keep on and on and on and on and on because what you do, you stifle your conscience till after a while, it doesn't say anything anymore.
That's where we are in this country to a great degree. We are in serious trouble because we've decided that pleasure and prosperity and plenty and the ability to do what I want to do when I want to do it is far superior than obeying a God I cannot see.
There are multitudes of people this morning who are shipwrecked. And they got shipwrecked because somebody told them it was all right, their conscience said no, their friend said yes, their conscience said no, their friend said yes.
You see, all of us are having to make decisions. When somebody tempts you to do what is wrong and the bell goes off, the worst thing you can do is silence the bell because it's God's way of working in your life in a fashion to protect you. That's what we say.
For example, we say this is a whole issue here. The whole issue is the consciousness is there to protect us and you don't want to silence it. Yet that is exactly what some people do.
Parents, Education, and Reprogramming Children
Now, when I think about parents who do not take time with their children, think about this. You and I are living in a society where many, probably most of the educational institutions in America are full of teachers, professors who do not believe what you and I believe about God.
So, we send our kids to school, they sit in the science class, they taught evolution. There's no God, all of this just happened. And they go to history class and say, "Well, that's old history. You can go to all the classes." What happens? Reprogramming your... watch this... reprogramming your children at your expense.
Reprogramming your children at your expense. So, they come home and they think you're old fogey. And, "Well, why don't you... what do you mean? I mean, I don't need to go to church anymore and I don't need God and all this..." In other words, so look, twelve years in school, four years in a college, and maybe after that. Reprogrammed at your expense to no longer believe in God, forget Him, this is a new day and a new age.
This is the new age, quote, "It's a new age, all right. But the philosophy of the new age is far older than anything that you can imagine. There's nothing new about the whole new age idea. It's a substitute for God."
Listen, you see, here's the problem. Man is built with this desire for God. God made him that way. So, if you don't want to do it God's way, you've got to have a substitute. So, you still make yourself religious, but you choose something that doesn't deprive you of what you want to do.
You see, here's what happens. I could take anybody through the Bible who says they only believe that part of the Bible's true. Here's what you're going to find. You know the part that's not true to them? The part they want to violate. So, they just decide, "I don't believe that anymore. That's just not the way it is. That's not who God is. God is who He says He is, exactly who He says He is."
Now, society changes, but look, God hasn't changed. The Word of God hasn't changed. And so, we have a society that we have had to muffle our conscience to depart from the Word of God and to depart from God's ways. And look where we are.
We are in a financial quandary, in a big mess. We've lost our reputation with the world. They might not have believed what we believed. At least they recognized there was something about us and our belief in God and Jesus Christ, and look how God had blessed us. But look where we are. We are in a very dangerous condition.
And if God's people don't stand up, rise up, and repentance starts at the house of God, and we want to see God turn this nation around, that doesn't mean we're going to make everybody a Baptist or a Methodist or a Presbyterian, that's not it. Listen, just get back to the Ten Commandments and say what's right, what's wrong, what's right in the eyes of God. This is what matters.
And I want to ask you again, what's wrong with the Ten Commandments? It's... watch this. It is the rudder that God intended for every nation on earth, to guide that nation in the right direction. It's the rudder for every single nation.
And when you put people in authority, as we do, and have, and still do, who do not honor God, who do not believe the Word of God, then what do we have? We have confusion. We have revolution. We have sin from every type. And defending stuff that you and I know absolutely is totally immoral and ungodly.
When Can You Trust Your Conscience? Seven Conditions
Now, so my original question was, can you trust your conscience? It doesn't look like you can. You say, okay, what's the difference in that and the Holy Spirit? Here's the difference: the Holy Spirit... we talk about Him convicting us of sin... the Holy Spirit works in conjunction with our conscience with which we were born.
The Holy Spirit is there to give direction to us when our conscience flares up for some reason. And that is, He's the one who interprets. What is it that God is saying, for example, because my conscience is hurting me and bothering me at this point, I think whatever I've said or whatever I'm thinking about doing, it's not right.
The Holy Spirit is there to give direction and help and to encourage us to do the right thing. So, the question is, can you trust your conscience? Well, if we voted now, we'd probably all vote a hundred percent, no indeed.
But what I want to show you is this: yes, you can under certain conditions. Watch this, the Ten Commandments has not changed. The Sermon on the Mount has not changed. The Word of God has not changed and God has not changed.
And God is the Author and the Creator of all things good. Creator of this world gave you a mind to think, the capacity to be able to achieve. So, if God hasn't changed and His Word hasn't changed, then who's doing the changing?
We are trying by muffling our conscience, deaden our conscience, searing our conscience. We are trying to create a different kind of lifestyle in which everybody will be accepted, God will accept this. Listen, you can't change the mind of God. All you can do... somebody says, well, I can break the law of God if I want to. No, you can't. You can break yourself over the law of God, but it's not going to change. It's not going to be broken.
So, the question is, can you trust your conscience? I'm going to give you seven things. All seven of them are very important. If you're going to trust your conscience, write these down. They'll be on the screen.
Number one, you can trust your conscience when Christ becomes your Savior and your Lord. That means that you acknowledge who God is. You believe that His Son coming to the earth, went to the cross, paid our sin debt in full, and now you've accepted Him as your Savior in a way of life.
Number two, that the Word of God, when the Word of God is the basis for your conduct... when the Word of God is the basis for your conduct, then you can start trusting. That's two, but that's only two.
Number three, when you have a strong desire to obey God, then your conscience and the Holy Spirit, all working together, you'll make the right decision. When you have a strong desire to obey God, and number four, when you prayerfully consider the decisions you make.
Here's an opportunity. When you prayerfully consider that as a child of God, desiring to be obedient to God, you can trust your conscience because your conscience is going to send you the correct signal.
Number five, a little bit longer. When your conscience sounds the alarm immediately upon your considering a wrong direction in thought or action. When your conscience sounds the alarm immediately, that's a good sign. Number one, it's active, it's working, it's alert, it's sharp, it's sensitive. Upon your considering a wrong direction, thought or deed, or action.
Number six, you can trust your conscience when you feel guilty immediately upon your disobedience. You say, "Oh, well, that must have been yesterday." No, you can trust your conscience when you feel guilty immediately upon disobedience. Because also, that's the work of the Holy Spirit.
And lastly, when you feel compelled to repent of your disobedience. If there's no compelling... I don't mean just a suggestion. To be compelled means a strong, urgent desire and feel the pressure of it. When you feel the pressure of confessing and repenting of that sin immediately.
And you put all seven of those together, and let's look at them. When Christ becomes your Savior and Lord. When the Word of God is the basis for your conduct. When you have a strong desire to obey God. When you prayerfully consider the decisions you're making. And when your conscience sounds the alarm immediately upon your considering a wrong direction or thought or action.
When you feel guilty immediately upon disobedience. And when you feel compelled to repent of your disobedience, then you can trust your conscience.
Facing Your Conscience Honestly Today
So, when you look at those, you ask yourself the question, "Is that true in my life? Do I feel guilty immediately? Or do I wait till two or three days later and I get to think about it, well, maybe that was or maybe it wasn't." No.
Listen, you have a heart that's beating. It's been beating ever since this sermon started. I hope for some of you, it's beating a little harder right now. Because deep down inside, you know that you've violated your conscience.
And what you did is you excused yourself and say, "Well, nobody's perfect. Everybody makes mistakes. We all make mistakes." And so, instead of listening to your conscience say, "Don't do that, repent of that, turn away from that," you just say, "Well, nobody's perfect."
Then you can't trust that conscience. What you have to ask is, what do we say? We said, for example, when the Word of God is the basis for your conduct. So, ask yourself the question, what is there going on in your life that is in contradiction to the Word of God?
Whatever it is needs to go because it doesn't fit who you are. And the one thing you'll hear the Holy Spirit say to you, "When you start doing something that's not right, that doesn't fit who you are."
You say, "Well, the Holy Spirit didn't speak to me that way. You know, it may not be exactly like that." That's really what He's saying. That doesn't fit who you are. That's not where you ought to go. That's not what you ought to do. That's the Spirit of God.
The conscience, the alarms set off. You have this hesitation, this warning, and the Spirit of God begins to interpret that. That's not who you are. You'll follow up Jesus. You couldn't believe that. You'll never be happy.
Listen, you must understand there are consequences to that. That's the voice of the Spirit of God trying to protect you from making shipwreck out of your life. It's just that simple.
So, let me ask you this question. What's going on in your life right now that you know is not right? How are you dealing with it? Are you trying to explain it away? Are you trying to drink it away? Or drug it away? Or listening to false teaching? Or listening to your friends who are not your friends if they're enticing you to do wrong?
What are you doing about your conscience? Has it become so muffled you don't even hear it no more? Then ask yourself the question, are you disobeying God? Are you violating the Ten Commandments? Are you ignoring the laws of God?
Then how do you explain that? It's like walking away from the helm of the ship in the storm. You're going to be shipwrecked. God must be your pilot or you're going to make shipwreck.
And your conscience is the alarm bell, the radar of your life to guide you in the right direction. If you have never trusted Jesus Christ as your Savior, Mark this down. You don't believe me today, I understand. You question it, I understand. But at least listen.
You're going to have a shipwreck in your life. I don't care how much money you have, who you are, what's your position, all of that, sin is sin. The wages of sin is death. We reap what we sow more than we sow, later than we sow.
And that should ring in your heart if you really and truly want to know what to do and what's right. It is my prayer for you that you will acknowledge where you are in your relationship to God.
And just say to Him, "Lord, I've been violating my conscience. I've been listening to the Holy Spirit. I've been choosing to do what I want to do. And Lord, I've tried to defend myself and I've tried to reason it out and prove that I'm right. But the truth is, you know you're not."
If you... listen, if you aren't willing to be honest enough to face the Word of God with your actions, then you're being dishonest. You're not being truthful even to yourself. You're headed for a shipwreck.
You say, "Well, how can I change that?" It starts with this: acknowledging your sinfulness before God and asking Him to forgive you and to cleanse you. Just tell Him, "Lord, I want what You want."
Asking Him to forgive you of your sins and accepting His death at the cross. Jesus is your personal Savior. He paid your sin debt in full. Accepting Him as your personal Savior, Lord of your life. Surrendering your life to Him. "Lord, not what I want, but what You want. Guide me, give me direction for my life. I want the best life, God. Here I am."
What does He do? He forgives you and cleanses you. Then you know what happens? The Holy Spirit begins to reprogram your thinking. You won't like some things you used to like. You won't go with some people you used to go with. You won't go some places, probably, that you used to go. You won't participate in some things you used to participate in.
You know what? He's going to replace all that with something that's good. And your conscience is going to be clean and good and healthy and strong. And you're going to be happier and have more joy and more peace. And you're going to have more security. And you're going to have a relationship with God you've never had before.
Your life is going to change because you've allowed the Spirit of God to begin His reprogramming in your life. Are you willing to do that? If you're not, one day you'll come to face death unavoidably. And there you are, shipwrecked on your island of sin, disobedience, and rebellion toward God. What a tragedy.
Doesn't have to be that way, but you have to make a decision. And it's my prayer at this very moment that whoever you are, whether you're here or whether you're out yonder somewhere, that you'd be wise enough to listen to the Spirit of God who's speaking to you right now. Today's the day. Now's the time to give your life to Christ. That's my prayer for you.
Father, how grateful we are that you've never turned anybody down. That no matter how far deep into sin we could possibly go when our desire is to be redeemed, saved, released, liberated, freed, forgiven, cleansed, a new life. You're always there to do it.
And I pray that every person who hears this message would be honest enough, stop faking themselves out, stop lying to themselves, and begin to face reality. Trust the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior. And we'll thank you for it. In Jesus' name. Amen.