Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Deep in every human heart is a conscience, a sense of right and wrong that we cannot shake off. When our conscience is clear, we have freedom.
When we violate it, we're in bondage. Today, a series begins to help us clean up our lives and our consciences. Stay tuned. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, give us a roadmap for the journey we begin today called The Power of a Clear Conscience. You know, Dave, before I get to the roadmap, I want to say to all who are listening, this would be a great opportunity for you to get on the phone, get on social media, connect with someone and tell them to listen to these messages on the power of a clear conscience.
Why do I say that? This is a message that Christians need to hear because you would be surprised at the number of people who go through life unable to make progress in their walk because there is something in their lives that they have not dealt with and they do not have a clear conscience. You know, the Bible says in 1 John that if our hearts condemn us not, then we have confidence toward God. And you would be surprised at the number of people who have no confidence toward God because they're dealing with a guilty conscience. The roadmap, of course, is to look at what the Bible says about conscience to deal with some very, very important issues such as narcissism, which destroys a person's conscience.
And that's why I believe so deeply that this series is going to be a blessing to all. So listen carefully, and at the end of this message, I'm going to be giving you some contact info. The title of this series of messages is entitled The Power of a Clear Conscience. And this first message is entitled Living in the Shadows, but it could also be entitled Out of the Shadows. It was Shakespeare in Hamlet who said that conscience makes cowards of us all. And isn't that true?
Don't care your background, doesn't matter what religion you're brought up in, what tradition, whether an atheistic home or otherwise religious home. I can tell you this, that you have at times violated your conscience, which sits in judgment of all of our actions and says, haha, you have violated what you know to be the truth. We can be assured of that. Now, the word conscience comes from two words, con, which means with, and then science, which means knowledge. It is knowledge along with us.
It is knowledge that we carry with us. And today we're going to look at the origin of conscience and its implications. Now, there are a couple of things you should know about conscience.
First of all, it is universal. Everyone has a conscience. In Romans chapter two, the Apostle Paul says that the pagans who do not have the law are going to be judged by their conscience, which is either going to accuse them or excuse them because the conscience is the rudimentary law of God written on every human heart. Now, of course, conscience can also be determined.
It can be, what shall we say, conditioned. The Apostle Paul talks about some Christians who have conscience that they can't do something and other Christians may have a conscience that they can. And conditioning is part of the conscience. For example, if you were brought up in Islam and then converted to Christianity, you might feel some guilt for not attending prayers in a mosque.
At least at some point your conscience might trouble you. I was brought up in a very strict Christian home where we were not allowed to go to movies at all. Now, of course, movies were just in their infancy when I was young and growing up. But I'll never forget the first time I ever was in a theater. It was many years ago to see the sound of music.
And that dates me a little bit, doesn't it? I expected the theater to kind of collapse on me. I expected the judgment of God. Well, judgment didn't come.
And since that time, Rebecca and I, we do go to movies about, I would think, maybe one a year, if one a year. But the point is that conscience can to some extent be conditioned. Now I need to remind you that conscience has tremendous power. It can destroy you. It can haunt you. It can be there day and night. The problem is that conscience, to begin with, conscience does not trouble you before you do an action. It remains silent. But after you have done it, especially in the night, there it is, haunting you, reminding you.
It puts you to bed at night and it awakens you in the morning. I know of a man whom I have become friends with, a man of God, whose mother was put into a psych ward of a hospital when he was growing up. She was frequently in a psych ward. It turned out that when he was 22, she confessed to him that the man whom he thought was his father was not his father at all. His father was actually a doctor in the community with whom she had had an affair.
Now you can imagine what this did to this young man. Whole questions of identity. And by the way, today he is mightily used of the Lord and holds ministries of revival in different churches. Proof of the fact today, my friend, that your origin does not hinder you for who you are if you take advantage of the marvelous, incredible grace of God.
Aren't you glad for that? But after his mother confessed, she didn't have to go to the psych ward anymore. I remember reading a doctor who said that I could dismiss half of my patients if I could just look them in the eye and give the assurance to them that they are forgiven.
Today, we're going to talk about this and this is what this series of messages will be about. Tremendous power. There is a man who is a wonderful Christian, married a lovely wife, lovely children. He's asked to be an elder in his church. This is not Moody Church.
This is in a church in a different state. And he always said no. He always said no.
Why? You know, you're gifted. You know the Bible. The truth is he confessed to his pastor that when he was in college, he had an affair with a young woman. And there's a little boy growing up in Dallas who is his. His wife doesn't know it.
His children don't know it. And always haunted by the fact of what he did in the past. He is stuck whenever he wants to make progress in the Christian life. Later on in this series of messages, we're going to talk about things like that. We're going to talk about reconciliation. What are the principles by which we can be reconciled? Because my goal is that all of us will have a clear conscience without offense before God and before man.
Could you imagine what Moody Church would be like if that were true? If we could look everyone in the eye knowing that we have done all we possibly can to make things right, this series of messages is going to deal with the question even of whether or not Lady Macbeth had to commit suicide because of all the guilt that she had. Young people today are committing suicide. And today, in the future, in these messages, we will tell them where to park their guilt and why it's not necessary. We're going to deal with impossible people. There are those who harden their conscience.
Some of them live with you. Some people here today have married impossible people. How do you live with an impossible person who does evil and has no twinge of guilt?
Well, all that by way of introduction. And by the way, the end result is going to be joy and gladness. I was reading in the book of Acts the other day where it says the early church had joy and gladness. You cannot have joy unless your conscience is free. You cannot believe God for the things you want to believe him for unless your conscience is free. The Bible says if our hearts condemn us not, then we have confidence toward God.
If you're here today with a condemning heart, you can believe, but not with a lot of confidence toward God. I want Moody Church to be a safe place. That's why we have various communities, various opportunities where you can share your need, where you can share your heart, where you can even share your past and know that you will not be shamed.
You are going to be helped. Because the truth is, my friend, as someone has said, we are either in denial or we are in recovery. All of us have issues with the conscience.
Well, that's the intro. Take your Bibles and turn to where the conscience began, namely Genesis chapter 3. Genesis chapter 3. You know, of course, the story that Adam and Eve are here in the garden, and they have a perfect environment. Can you imagine they have all of the beauty that they want? They have all of the food that they want.
They have fellowship with God who comes walking with them in the cool of the day. Eve had no insecurities. She didn't have to compete with the supermodels that are on newsstands as we check out the groceries at the checkout counter. She didn't have to lie awake at night wondering whether or not she had really married the right man.
She didn't have those problems. And yet for all of that, she and her husband decided to sin, as you well know. And we're going to go right to the decision that they made in chapter 3. The serpent comes to them. He gets them to doubt God's word.
And they have this dialogue, and I assume that you know about the dialogue. But the serpent said to the woman in chapter 3, verse 4, you will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it, that is the forbidden fruit, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.
The implication is that you're going to know good and evil, and you're going to make your own decisions as to what is good and what is evil, because you are going to take the place of God. What he said to Eve was, feel, don't think. Don't you see that the fruit is beautiful?
And sin always comes to us looking very beautiful. And so what she did is she partook of the tree, and her husband was there standing in the garden with her and let her do it. I've often thought that the first sin might not have been Eve actually eating the fruit of the tree. It might have been Adam abdicating his responsibility as her husband to watch her do it and participate with her. Well, you know the rest of the story. Suddenly they experienced what we could call the unexpected, the unplanned response of circumstances, the unintended consequences.
All of that happened. And of course, we know that they could not predict what those circumstances would be. When God said, don't eat of the fruit of the tree for in the day that you eat thereof, you shall surely die. They had no experience of death. So they said to themselves, we can handle, we can handle the consequences.
It won't be that bad. Furthermore, if we don't eat of the fruit of the tree, we're always going to wonder what it would have been like if we had. We can't live with that curiosity.
So what we're going to do is to make sure that we eat of the fruit of the tree. They did not know that they were beginning a series of dominoes. They could have never predicted that someday they would have a son by the name of Cain who would kill his brother Abel. And all of this evil would now go into the human race. All of the evil would flow throughout history. They had no way to predict that.
And my friend today, you and I have no idea. We cannot predict the consequences of our disobedience either. Sometimes those consequences are like a basketball in an ocean. You push them down over here and you think at last I am rid of them. And then they pop up somewhere else and you still have to deal with them because all consequences of sin are unintended, but oftentimes ongoing. Well, now let us look at exactly what happens here in this context. Shame begins.
Shame. The Bible ended in chapter two, the last part of the verse. They were naked and were not ashamed. Verse nine now, they heard the sound, excuse me, eight, of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day and the man and his wife hid themselves in the presence of the Lord among the trees of the garden. But the Lord called to the man and said, notice man has the responsibility.
Where are you? He said, I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. He said, who told you that you were naked?
That's a very good question. How did you know that you were naked? Did I tell you that you were naked? Because there are a little bird in the trees in the garden that shouted, hey, you're naked.
You're naked. Who told you? Conscience. You can underline that phrase in your Bible.
That's where it all began. And now suddenly shame is going to be huge in terms of the consequences of sin. That's why the next message in this series is actually entitled, it's not all your fault. Because you see, some of you were brought up in a shame-based home.
You were taught to lie for your parents. You know the shame not only of poverty, but of alcoholism and addictions and brokenness and abuse. And that shame you carry. But that's not your shame. What you need to do is to get rid of it and that will be the sermon in the series next time.
Shame is going to be huge. Hiding. Oh, this is where the compartmentalized life begins, right here, hiding.
Here it all begins in compartment A. He is a Sunday school teacher. He is well thought of.
He is respected in the community. Compartment B, he's an abuser. He's an alcoholic. He's an addict. One time some children of a rather prominent Christian who is highly respected came to me and they said, we just want you to know, even though our dad is great in the community, he's an alcoholic. There isn't a night that he does not have to drink every single night.
What do we do? But he's able to hide it, you see. And that's why you have men studying computers to try to find out how they can erase everything from their hard drive. Because, you see, it has to be hidden above all things the shame and the sense of inadequacy. But over here, they are well respected. And all of us have a private life.
I wouldn't want you to know all of the thoughts that I had this past week. Many of you listened to James Vernon McGee on the radio. He's been dead for many years, but he's still speaking and having a great ministry. But from this platform at Founders Week, I recall he said this.
I almost was going to impersonate him in his gravelly voice, but I don't know if I'm going to do that or not. But he said this. He said, if you knew my heart the way I know my heart, he said, you wouldn't listen to me. And then he paused and he said, now, before you run to the exits, he said, if I knew your heart the way you know your heart, he said, I wouldn't even be talking to you. Listen, the fall has affected all of us.
And so what happens now is you have the compartmentalization of our lives because there's that which we want to hide. And then what you have is blaming. You remember God says, Adam, why did you eat?
And what did he say? The first person to blame is God. He said, Lord, this woman, this weak willed woman whom you gave me, whom you, you gave me, she took up the tree and then what's the guy supposed to do? He's got to eat.
I mean, his wife is eating. If you had given me a better wife, this wouldn't have happened. She's to blame. Adam blamed his wife, even though there wasn't a chance in the world that he had married the wrong one.
Do you notice that? You know, my friend, we don't really understand the depths of our sin. The Bible says that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. We've all done things of which we are ashamed. In many instances, we don't know what to do with our past, particularly if other people have been involved in our sinfulness. That's why I believe so deeply that this series of messages and a book I've written entitled The Power of a Clear Conscience will be so necessary for many people who struggle with their past, who try to exist by pushing down deep into their souls issues that they need to deal with.
So we're making this resource available for you. You know, as I look through the table of contents, I'm reminded of how I emphasize that Lady Macbeth in Shakespeare's play did not have to commit suicide. Nobody has to. Nobody has to deal with such depression without realizing that there is hope. There is a way out of the darkness.
Dealing with our past oftentimes is very critical if we want to march into our future with confidence and joy. So for a gift of any amount, we're making available for you, as I mentioned before, the book entitled The Power of a Clear Conscience. Here's what you do. Go to RTWOffer.com.
That's RTWOffer.com or you pick up the phone and call us at 1-888-218-9337. As I mentioned at the beginning of this message, call your friends. Tell them to listen because you will discover there's something here for all of us that will benefit us getting past our past, if I might put it that way, and getting on with a better future. Remember the words of scripture that I began with. The Bible says that if our hearts do not condemn us, then we have confidence toward God. The title of the book, The Power of a Clear Conscience. Time now for another chance for you to ask Pastor Lutzer a question about the Bible or the Christian life.
Two by two, Dan lives in Indianapolis and listens to Running to Win on WGNR. He asks, I heard you answer a listener's question on one of your broadcasts. In part, you said that you believe the dinosaurs were wiped out by the flood. I don't disagree, but wouldn't Noah have included dinosaurs with the rest of the animals aboard the ark?
Well thank you so much for writing, and thanks for your question. You know, I know I made that statement because that is always what I believed, that the dinosaurs would have been wiped out in the flood, and I thought to myself, Noah might not have taken them into the ark because they are so big. But you know, because of your question, I actually looked up some articles on this, and I discovered that many Christians, many scientists, and those who work in terms of the age of the earth and so forth, they take the point of view – I'm talking about Christians now, of course – they take the point of view that indeed Noah would have brought the dinosaurs into the ark. And after the animals came out of the ark, they would discover all kinds of new challenges and conditions that they would have to adapt to. So it's because of that, maybe because of their size, maybe because they were hunted.
For whatever reasons, the dinosaurs died out, just like some other species have. So that might be a better biblical answer. So thanks so much for your question, because it made me rethink a statement that I made some time ago. God bless you, and keep reading the Word and keep trusting it, even in scientific matters. A veritable flood of wisdom for Dan and all of us from Dr. Erwin Lutzer. Thank you, Dr. Lutzer. If you'd like to hear your question answered, go to our website at rtwoffer.com and click on Ask Pastor Lutzer. Or call us at 1-888-218-9337.
That's 1-888-218-9337. You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, IL 60614. Running to Win is all about helping you find God's roadmap for your race of life. When sin entered the human race, we moved from the sunlight to the shadows. Next time on Running to Win, more insights from the Garden of Eden. Thanks for listening. This is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.
