[0:00] Please turn to Proverbs 28. It's nice to have Tracy home for a little bit and get to hear her sing. And it's also nice that we get to share her with the people of Chile and that she's there learning Spanish.
[0:15] She goes back June the 19th, July the 19th, and so it's not too far off. And so we just get a little bit more time with her. But we thank God. A lot of her prayers have been answered since she's been here about getting things in order so that she can have a long season of ministry in Chile.
[0:32] But there is a box for her as well. We'll give some dates about that in the future. We're asking you to write a letter to her. And we have her send-off service, also the Graham and Olivia, which is coming up in a couple weeks on a Sunday night.
[0:43] The box is here in front of us. I want to get to, Tyler, would you come up here and bring that baby boy there with you if you want to as well, all right? Don't wake him, everybody, okay? Never wake a sleeping baby, number one rule of parenting, all right?
[0:56] And I'm going to ask you a couple questions. I didn't know you had that beautiful boy there with you. Before I get to Proverbs chapter number 28, you come right here. So I just signed something for you out in the fore here.
[1:06] Why don't you explain to them what it was and how you've been working on that? So part of our training in the Our Generation Training Center, we have to preach 100 times, preach or teach 100 times before we can fully graduate.
[1:19] And so Trent just signed my 100th time of preaching. Okay, don't clap. Don't clap. We've got a baby up here, okay? Pretend to be Presbyterian. So I just finished my final log of my preaching logs.
[1:33] That's awesome. And then as Greg was talking about Vacation Bible School and loving these kids, which I know that you do, whoever God sends us next week, we know it is a gift from God that he would send people here.
[1:45] And we would get to be that. We get to welcome them. The family of God, we get to welcome people to our group, to our assembly. That's special. Remind us how old you were when you got saved.
[1:56] I was 19 years old when I got saved. That's right. And so today, we better hurry up with this, right? Life is another of this. Today, how many kids did you have in church with you?
[2:08] Today? Well, we had a college visiting, so our room was packed out. Okay, no. How many in your family? Oh, in our family? Yeah, in your family. Four. Four.
[2:19] It took you a minute, didn't it? Okay. I had to think about that. That's good. All right. All right. You slip back down before Life's wings up here. It's the lights. You've seen, what's that? It's the lights. It's the lights.
[2:30] It's, the stats have been seen, you know, if a kid comes to Christ, there's a good chance his family will get in church. A mom gets in church, good chance the family will get in church. But when a dad gets in church, it can really change generations.
[2:44] And one of the most loving things we could do for the kids who come here next week is that little brief moment that we have when the parents bring them and drop them off. We're very mindful of them.
[2:54] Men, we walk up to the men and shake their hand, look them in the eye, thank them for letting us invest in their kids and get to know them. And it's been wonderful. My dad didn't attend church when I was a kid, but when I was a teenager, he called the country preacher, which is all we have in Kentucky, right?
[3:12] He called the preacher and he said, my kids know the Lord and they're going to be in heaven someday, but I'm not going to be. Can you get over here and tell me how to go to heaven? And I had one entire summer where he came to church with us and worked in Vacation Bible School.
[3:27] But in loving these kids, we got to love their families, all right? And so that's what we want to do. Family doesn't want to come. We'll set up a system. We'll send a van. We'll do all that we can. And that's wonderful. But that's not plan A.
[3:39] Plan A is for them to get in the car with mom and dad and come to church. And so to love that family is to love the kids is to love that family. Proverbs 28, 1.
[3:50] The wicked flee when no man pursueth. Why do they do that? But the righteous are bold as a lion. How can they be like that? The wicked flee when no man pursueth.
[4:01] Why? But the righteous are as bold as a lion. How? That's the two things we're going to look at tonight is the why would the wicked flee and how can the righteous stand bold as a lion.
[4:15] I have a painting that I want to show you here. A little something I put together. No, I didn't. It's a painting here. Yes. And Dirk Williams, he didn't play for the Detroit Pistons in the 90s. A different Dirk Williams here.
[4:26] But this Anabaptist Dirk Williams. Matt gave me a book. And it's a huge book of Anabaptist stories. And this is on the front of it. When you think about Anabaptist history, this is a very common story.
[4:37] Probably a lot of you know it. But I'll just share it with you. It's one that you need to know. How many of you have seen this picture before at some point, right? Dirk Williams was an Anabaptist. This was very dangerous in 1569.
[4:49] They would say that Anabaptists would get baptized three times. That they were baptized as infants. But then they got older, they would realize that baptisms would come after salvation. So they would truly get baptized.
[5:00] You can't be baptized multiple times. You can only be scripturally baptized, you know, once in your life. But they were either sprinkled or baptized as a baby. But then they grew up and heard the word.
[5:10] And then they knew as adults they needed to be scripturally baptized. But then the third baptism was one of death. Where they might tie them to a ladder and put them underneath water and hold them.
[5:20] So this was a persecuted group of people that were holding to a Bible-believing understanding of the gospel. Do they know what we know now? Or are we exactly the same as them?
[5:32] No. But were they God-fearing people? Many of them most certainly were. And they knew the word. Dirk Williams. This was dangerous in 1569 to be an Anabaptist. Especially in this little town of Holland.
[5:44] And many of his friends there had already given their lives for their faith. Dirk himself was imprisoned in a castle for the same reason. The castle was gated and surrounded by a moat.
[5:55] As winter set in, however, the moat froze over. Dirk tied some rags into a rope, slid out of the window, and dropped into the ice. Quickly he crossed the moat and raced across a meadow.
[6:06] Not quickly enough. A guard saw him fleeing and went after him. And they raced across a Dutch landscape. Dirk cut across a dangerous section of ice. Though he made it across, the pursuer did not.
[6:18] He crashed through the ice, crying out for help. A little longer version of this story tells about how much weight he had lost. You know, being in this prison. So he couldn't get across with a guy guarding him.
[6:30] Couldn't. But Dirk was faced with a difficult choice. Helping his pursuer could result in torture and death. Many of his fellow Anabaptists had ended their lives in just that sort of glorious martyrdom for Christ.
[6:41] Dirk proved himself a disciple. He said, for me to live is Christ and to die is game. And he rescued his pursuer, that guard, by pulling him out of the frigid waters. And the Paul Harvey rest of the story that you'd want to know about is did the guard let him know and answers.
[6:57] Unfortunately, though the guard was willing, the Roman Catholic Burgermeister, which is mayor. The Burgermeister is a lot more fun to say, isn't it? He told the guard to mind his oath and Dirk was returned to the castle.
[7:11] This time they were more careful. And soon after, Dirk was sent to his heavenly reward by the fires of his persecutors. So it's just a great picture of a man just living out a real gospel reality, living as a citizen.
[7:26] Who gets their captor that was holding them? Who gets their captor and saves them? It's a person that isn't from Holland. It isn't a person that would be from America.
[7:36] It's a citizen of another world. And so this citizen of heaven lived his life from the inside out. And he said he was going to do something very bold. This is the right thing to do.
[7:46] And I'm going to do it regardless of the consequences to us. And this is very inspirational. It's a story. It's a name you should know. We tell our kids stories. Dirk Williams is a story that we should share with people and be motivated by it.
[8:02] We don't often have the opportunity to live out our faith in this manner. But we have a lot of opportunities where we are either going to be bold and courageous for the cause of Christ. Or we are going to hide.
[8:13] And as God-believing, fearing people and righteous people because of him, we should live this bold life. Philippians 1.27. You know the passage.
[8:24] It tells us that we should let our conversation, our lifestyle, becometh the gospel of Christ. It ought to be we ought to live in such a way that becometh. It looks like a person who's living out the gospel. That whether I come and see you or else be absent, if I see, I want to hear of your affairs.
[8:39] And that you stand fast in one spirit, one mind, striving together for the faith of the gospel. If I come and see you guys at Philippi, Paul said, or if I just hear testimony, I should hear people that are living lives like Dirk Williams that says, it only makes sense that these are people that have been transformed by the gospel message.
[8:57] But one of the results of living out the gospel, of living as becometh the gospel, verse 28, and nothing terrified by your adversaries, which is them an evident token of perdition, but to you of salvation and that of God.
[9:12] Another story, one of my favorites in Galatians 2, Paul and Peter are having a conversation. Paul confronts Peter, and he says in verse 14 in chapter 2, And when I saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, I said unto Peter before them all, If thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compelest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews?
[9:33] Peter was not walking upright according to the gospel. He wasn't living in a way that becometh the gospel. His conversation wasn't reflecting the gospel, mainly in his unwillingness to associate with Gentile people.
[9:47] But then when questioned, this great apostle that we are grateful for, that passed his faith on to another generation, but when Peter had to explain why it was that he did what he did, why did he live in a way that didn't reflect the gospel?
[10:02] What was his answer? He feared. He feared this group of Jewish people coming from his hometown that would judge the way that he lived. Some of the greatest, strongest examples in the Bible of people that we would have are people that were motivated by fear at times to not live out the gospel.
[10:22] Ever looked at a billboard or watched the commercial, and at the end of it you're like, I had no idea that was a commercial for a car. I had no idea that was a commercial. It just seemed to have nothing to do with it at all. The advertisement had nothing to do with it.
[10:34] Well, your life ought to be an advertisement for the value of the gospel. People shouldn't say, well, I didn't see that. I didn't understand that that, what it was about. And one of the ways that we live and show the worth of the gospel is when the gospel makes us bold and courageous and unafraid, as we saw in Philippians 128, being terrified, being nothing terrified by your adversaries.
[10:55] It's about boldness. It is the righteous are as bold as lions. The wicked flee when no man pursueth, but the righteous are bold as lions. This passage isn't talking about the feet of the wicked and the feet of the bold.
[11:11] They're going to look the same. But what you're going to see is the conscience of the righteous versus the conscience of the wicked, how that is going to affect the way that they live out their lives.
[11:23] There's a correlation between wickedness and fear on one hand and righteousness and courage on the other side. This proverb here doesn't mean that wicked people can't be bold.
[11:36] It says in Proverbs 14, 16, A wise man feareth and departed from evil, but the fool rages and is confident. There can be people that are bold in their wickedness, that are confident in their wickedness.
[11:47] It also doesn't mean that the righteous won't battle being timid or cowardly at times. Boldness requires, has to be enabled by the Holy Spirit. Acts 4, and when they had prayed, verse 31, and when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together, and they were filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with boldness.
[12:09] Boldness is something different than adrenaline. Boldness is not what you have when your team gets in a huddle before a football game and slaps each other in the face and says, we can do this, right?
[12:19] Boldness is what the Holy Spirit produces inside of a believer, which is a strong confidence to live according to a law of the land that is different than the one that you're in, but as citizens of heaven.
[12:32] Paul even encourages Timothy in this area, right? You know in 2 Timothy 1, 7, he tells them that God has given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. Timothy, be bold, be courageous.
[12:45] You're serving God. Do the work that God's called you to do. Have confidence in your calling here. So, first of all, why? Why does the wicked flee when nobody pursues them?
[12:57] This speaks of a confusion and a fear that properly belong to the wicked, not to the godly and the wise. This is both because under God's displeasure and because they lack the strength and courage of the Holy Spirit.
[13:10] I don't know what your first thought is when I say the word conscience. I wonder if anybody has the same thought I first had when I hear the word. For me, it comes down to Jiminy Cricket in the original Pinocchio cartoon.
[13:21] All right? And in the original Pinocchio cartoon here, Jiminy Cricket, little cricket, is talking to Pinocchio, and the cricket says to him, there's times that the wrong thing seems right and the right thing seems wrong.
[13:35] And then he is told that let your conscience be your... Ah, you do know this, okay? And there's a song that says, when you get in trouble and you don't know right from wrong, give a little whistle.
[13:47] Anybody? No, that isn't, Elias. All right. That was not the whistle. Does anybody know the whistle for this? I can't whistle while I'm up here. My mouth would be way too dry, okay? Feels like I eat a box of crackers where I come up here every time.
[13:59] But it says, give a little... When your temptation, your urge is very strong, give a little whistle, not just a little squeak. Pucker up and blow. If your whistle's weak, yell Jiminy Cricket. And then he says, and let your conscience be your guide.
[14:12] So this Pinocchio, who's not a real boy, right? He's made out of wood. He wouldn't have a conscience. He needed this cricket to be his guide because he was not built as a human in having a conscience.
[14:25] That is something that we have as humans, something that God has built us with, is with this conscience. So they get many things wrong. But one thing that they would have got right in that cartoon is that if you were to make a person out of wood, they would not have a conscience given to them.
[14:41] That is something that is given to us from our Creator. So let me give you four New Testament truths about our conscience. First off, our conscience is a God-given capacity for human beings to exercise self-evaluation.
[14:56] This is how Paul speaks about his conscience in Acts 23.1. And Paul, earnestly and beholding the counsel, said, Men and brethren, I have lived in all good conscience before God until this day.
[15:08] I have lived in a good conscience, Acts 24.16. And herein do I exercise myself to have always a conscience void of offense towards God and towards men. And so it's the God-given capacity to know and evaluate what you're doing, being right or wrong.
[15:24] The problem with the idea that many of you are given, and you might accept it to be as true, with an angel sitting on one shoulder and then a demon sitting on the other's shoulder, you're picturing this here with me, you've seen this before in cartoons or in drawings or something, is that those people are giving you new information, and they're having a debate as if there's an argument going on.
[15:45] See, the conscience isn't doing that. The conscience is taking the information that you have and is telling you what your value system is. John MacArthur says, A built-in warning system that signals us when something we have done is wrong.
[15:58] The conscience is to our souls what pain sensors are to our bodies. It inflicts distress in the form of guilt whenever we violate what our hearts tell us is right.
[16:10] The ability to know that your foot is on fire is a real blessing, right? The ability that you know that you have pain is a real blessing in your life. The guilt that you would have that in your life when you are going in the wrong direction and sinning against God is a real blessing, that God would do that in you, that He would make you aware of that.
[16:30] It's a blessing for the unbeliever to know the difference between right and wrong, that they live in a world that they already know. There's a creator. There's not only a creator of this universe. There is somebody that wrote some moral code that is laid upon my heart, and I know that I am breaking it.
[16:46] Then he goes on to say that a conscience is a witness to something. Romans 2, it speaks about that. It says, If the Gentiles do which is by the law, but they don't have the law, and they just do it by nature, it's as a law that's written unto themselves.
[16:59] It's a conscience also bearing, and their thoughts that the meanwhile accusing or excusing themselves. The Gentiles not having the word of God as the Jewish people did, still had a sense of right or wrong inside of them that God had built for them inside.
[17:15] Romans 9, 1, I say the truth in Christ, I lie not. My conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost. So this conscience is a trustworthy God only when it is informed and ruled by the Bible.
[17:28] Only when it knows what the Bible has informed us can it serve you in the way that it should, which is what it's supposed to do. It's supposed to be a servant of our individual value system. If you're immature or have a weak value system, you have a weak understanding of right and wrong, that would happen by not being discipled and trained as a kid or not growing up and being nurtured in the Bible, knowing right from wrong.
[17:51] Then you would have an undeveloped conscience in knowing right from wrong. Romans 14, 5, One man esteemeth one day above another, another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.
[18:03] Let a person live according to the conscience of what they know to be right and wrong, which should be informed by the Word of God. Former President Barack Obama was interviewed in 2004, and a Christian religious reporter, I should say, asked him what sin is, and the former president responded with, being out of alignment with my values.
[18:27] While there's a lot of, there's some truth to what's being said here. Mr. Obama said, describing being out of alignment with my values, which also be saying violating our own conscience.
[18:39] Which say, he that knoweth to doeth right unto him that doesn't do it, it is sin. So that is, there's truth to that, right? To go against your own conscience would be sin, but the conscience needs to be subjected and informed by the Word of God.
[18:52] And the last truth here that the Bible, New Testament, that I'm going to make mention of would speak about your conscience, is that a conscience can be seared or rendered insensitive as being catorized or burned by hot iron.
[19:07] 1 Timothy 4, 1. Now the Spirit speaks expressly that in latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils, speaking lies and hypocrisy, having their conscience seared with a hot iron.
[19:20] Ephesians 4, 19. Who being past feelings have given themselves over unto lasciviousness to work on cleanness with greediness. Never forget a message as a teenager, that during the message, the preacher, the evangelist there, they dimmed the lights the entire service.
[19:37] So at the end of the service, he says, you may not recognize this, but the lighting of the auditorium is now 40% less than it was when the service started, because he just did it incrementally.
[19:50] And it says that in our conscience, there comes to a point an unbeliever will just continue saying no, keep saying yes, keep saying yes to what's wrong, and saying no to what is right, and that conscience is becoming desensitized and recognizing.
[20:03] It says in latter times, in the day in which we would live in, we live in the end times, we would see people that can boldly proclaim what is wrong, because they have seared their conscience.
[20:14] What's an example of a person with an unclear conscience causing a person to flee? First one in the Bible, right? First example in the story, Genesis 3.8. And they heard a voice, Adam and Eve heard a voice, It's a conscience.
[20:48] He would flee when no man pursued. Was God coming to walk with them in the cool of the day? Yes. Was he pursuing them in the same way that it talks about in Proverbs 28?
[21:00] No. But Adam had a guilty conscience. I shared the story with the middle schoolers today speaking on this subject. A lot of you might know the story of a telltale heart, Edgar Allan Poe.
[21:11] It's a man who just can't stand that his landlord has this eye that he doesn't want to look at. It's a bluish eye with film over it. He loves the guy, but he can't stand the eye. So every night he goes in there and he looks at the guy and he doesn't do anything until the night that he opens up his lantern and he looks at that eye and he kills the man and he buries him.
[21:31] Yeah, that took a turn, didn't it, if you didn't know the story. And he buries him there in the bedroom. And he's very confident, invites people in. And he's real bold in what he's doing. He doesn't think anybody knows. And he has some people over, but he's sitting there on top of where that man was and he hears a ticking, right?
[21:45] He hears this ticking and he gets in his mind, it's the man's heart, but it's probably the man's watch, right? And he just hears it and he's so paranoid and he says, everybody thinks in his mind, everybody knows what I've done and they're all just making fun of me.
[21:59] They're just making a fool out of me. And he stands up and proclaims, I have done it. Because even the world would know about the ability of the conscience to make you aware of the fact of doing wrong.
[22:11] So never before did Adam have to flee at the arrival of God. Adam now flees when no one is pursuing. And why? Because his conscience condemns him and he hears this condemnation and every breeze that blows and every creak in the door and every whistle on the field.
[22:27] He sees it in every shadow and every flashing light and he feels it in the presence of God. And so woe to the wicked who cease to hear the footsteps of God. Woe to the people that do not recognize when they have done wrong against God and their conscience will not make them aware of it.
[22:45] Said to the middle schoolers of the day, they tell us that when teenagers decide to leave church, as soon as they graduate and they disappear, which has happened in times in churches all across the world, that that teenager made that decision in middle school for the most part.
[23:01] And then they just went through the motions for the next five or six years or whatever it is. One of the reasons that people will leave church is because they want to flee because their conscience doesn't allow them to want to come around God's people anymore.
[23:16] Because just like the story in Telltale Heart, they just think, oh, everybody knows about me. They know what's going on. They're judging me. Is that the case in most times? Not in a good God-loving church.
[23:26] They're not judging them. But that conscience will cause them to want to leave. So the proverb here implies that the wicked promptly by guilty conscience or fear of judgment become fearful and suspicious of everyone.
[23:39] Thatcher and Ben Myers had an invigorating conversation about the difference between people and cheetahs, you know, and who hasn't had a good conversation with your friend about people and cheetahs and how humans can run farther than animals because they're able to sweat.
[23:55] And there's some word Thatcher was trying to use. I think he made it up. But it just meant that we were able to breathe and run at the same time, which I didn't realize is what you're supposed to do. And I'm going to try running again.
[24:05] It sounds a lot better than what I was doing. Crocker's know about it. You can run and breathe at the same time. Apparently humans can. I'm going to give it a shot someday. But that's something that makes them different.
[24:16] But this awareness, this consciousness that we were created, this consciousness of right and wrong is something that God has gifted us with. Lastly, the righteous. In contrast to the wicked, the righteous are bold.
[24:28] God's righteous ones stand even when one comes against them. And with God's strength, they're as bold as a lion. I was surprised that with how many references the lions there were in the Bible.
[24:38] I thought this would be helpful. God says they're bold as a lion. I should read every reference about lions. That took me a lot longer than I expected. But the thing that I pulled from it that I think would be helpful if you, I try to imagine what would it be like if I lived in a time where I could not see a lion at the zoo?
[24:53] What if I'm an Eskimo kid, you know, somewhere in far north Alaska who never sees a lion? The only lion that I'd ever read about was in the Bible. What is the truth that I would need to know about a lion when the Bible says that the righteous are as bold as a lion?
[25:09] I think we found that in Proverbs 30, 30. It says, A lion which is strongest among beasts and turneth not away for any. That a lion does not have to move because of any other animal out there.
[25:22] He is the king of the jungle, right? That we're taught. And so the lion here is a righteous or as bold as a lion. David speaks to the blessing of the heart of the righteous.
[25:34] The righteous are blessed people. Psalms 32, verses 1 and 2. It says, Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and whose spirit there is no guile.
[25:48] And then it describes at the end of the chapter what is the blessing. In verse 10, Many sorrows shall be the wicked, but he that trusts in the Lord mercy shall compass him about. And be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, ye righteous, and shout for joy, all ye that are upright in heart.
[26:03] A rejoicing and a joy that would come from a person whose sins have not been imputed unto him, who has been lived with their sins being covered. There's a great joy in an uprightness of heart.
[26:15] So it's our imputed righteousness that has been given to us that makes us free from fear. Hebrews 10, 22. Let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.
[26:31] Our hearts no longer condemn us. Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then we have, have we confidence towards God. 1 John 3, 21. The imputed righteousness of God has allowed my heart to be cleansed, and for me to recognize that I can live with the joy of living with this clear conscience.
[26:52] We're right with God because of the grace, not based on merit. Our boldness with God and with men shows forth in the value of the gospel. Hebrews 4, 2. For unto us was the gospel preached as well unto them, but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it.
[27:07] It's the gospel of God that allows us to live with this boldness because we know that we are righteous people. And so how will we stand bold with a clear conscience? Look at 1 Peter chapter 3, if you will.
[27:20] But if you suffer for righteousness' sake, happy are ye, and be ye not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled. But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asks you a reason of hope that is in you with meekness and fear, having a good conscience that whereas they speak of evil of you as of evildoers, that you may be ashamed that falsely accuse your good conversation in Christ.
[27:44] This response of having a clear conscience allows us to do some things. It allows us to live with gentleness and a fear of God. The blameless meeting on Friday night had a good time. A group of men, we studied the Bible together.
[27:56] Ben Myers talked about living a blameless life before this world, and Dylan taught about living a blameless life inside of the church. Conversation that came out of that meeting was, by whom are we living a blameless life?
[28:09] Who would get to decide if we are living our lives blameless? Who are we living in front of? Conversation led to the fact that we need to be blameless and clean before the God of heaven.
[28:21] That the world that reviles us is never going to give us a clean bill. They're never going to be the ones that say, you know what, I don't agree with them, but you can't say anything against them. No, it says that they're going to revile us.
[28:33] 1 Peter 3, 9, Not rendering evil for evil or railing, for railing, but contrarized blessing, knowing that you thereunto called that you shall inherit a blessing. Living before God with this clear conscience causes you to live bold, and that boldness will cause us to be people that can return good for evil.
[28:53] We respond with fear for God, but not man with a meekness and a fear. The first part of 1 Peter 3 tells us not to fear man, but in 1 Peter 15 it tells us that we should have meekness and fear.
[29:05] It's not the fear of man that motivates this strong desire, but the fear that properly represents this reason of hope is one that is towards God. And the reason of 1 Peter that we're given is that we should have this as our greatest prize is because it says that 1 Peter 1, 17, and if you recall on the Father who without respect the person judges according to every man's work, past the time you're sojourning here in fear, forasmuch as you know that you are not redeemed with corruptible things of silver and gold from the Father's conversation received by tradition from your fathers.
[29:39] But why can you live like this? Because with the precious blood of Christ, as of the Lamb, without blemish and without spot, that we would be motivated with a proper fear, that we want to bring honor and not shame to Jesus because of what He's done in the gospel.
[29:57] So have a good conscience. We do this by being gentle and fearing and bringing reproach to the name of Christ. Our following Christ changes our lives and allows us to live blameless among another and among others in this world.
[30:09] It says to be not be afraid and be not troubled, not just a matter before others, but it's a matter of the death and resurrection of Christ. 1 Peter, it tells you that you ought to be baptized, but the answer of a good conscience towards God by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
[30:26] Peter was exhorting them and encouraging them to commit themselves to this course of action of being public and their public stand for Christ through baptism. This baptism, it didn't save them, as we know, but what it did is allowed them to live in a good conscience because they knew that in that time and age and in also times and parts of the world we live in now, that baptism is a public declaration.
[30:50] I stand with the resurrection of Christ. And as a believer, we say we stand with it. And it says that if you don't in this passage, by not doing that, you don't live with a good conscience because you're not living with your association there to the gospel.
[31:07] So baptism publicly associated them with the resurrection of Christ here. And it's the blood of Christ that purges our conscience. Question. So when your conscience rises and condemns you, where will you turn?
[31:22] The wicked flee when no man pursues? Why? Because his conscience condemns him and he doesn't want to stand before any authority. And so he runs like Adam in the garden.
[31:33] But the righteous, they're as bold as lions. Is it because they've lived such a good life that they have such a testimony that they look at it? No. The bold, we're bold because the righteousness that was imputed to us by the gospel.
[31:47] So when your conscience rises up and condemns you, where should you turn? You turn to the blood of Christ and you turn to the only cleansing agent in the universe that can give you relief in life and peace and death.
[32:00] Hebrews 9, 14. How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?
[32:11] It's that gospel that allows us to have a gentle response. We close here with Psalm chapter number 51. Let me read this to you and then we'll pray and we'll be dismissed tonight.
[32:22] But David, you know David, he sinned. I was tempted to say he messed up, but he didn't more than that. He just sinned. He knew right from wrong and he chose wrong. That's what he says in Psalm chapter number 51.
[32:34] A person who would wrestle with a guilty conscience. There's something in your life you just say have guilt and shame. Somebody sent me a message about Maze Jackson. Anybody know Maze Jackson in here? Evangelist of old time.
[32:46] And I listened to him and the story was quite amazing. A man who had been a pastor had fallen into sin and he had just lived his life and he was just now, he weighed like 70 pounds and Maze Jackson came to him and the man crawled down the steps and he was just dying.
[33:02] And he came to him and he was talking to Maze Jackson and he was just a completely broken man and he died the week following. And Maze Jackson asked somebody here in Georgia to send flowers to the man.
[33:14] And he said, would you write on the card, I'm sorry that I didn't get there before the shame came. See, the man was so eaten up with shame in his life because of whatever he did.
[33:26] And the accuser of the brother had him so beaten down because he didn't have a clear conscience. So he spent the rest of his life fleeing as a man. He's living out not as imputed righteousness that the gospel provided for him, but he lived a life of shame and as a hermit from everybody else until he died.
[33:44] And his friend says, I wish I would have got there before the shame came. Because what could he have done? He could have taken the word of God and said, let me tell you, my brother, yes, you've made a mess of your life.
[33:55] Yes, you need to repent of your sins, but your righteousness is not found in yourself. Today, you can go boldly before the throne of God because it's the righteousness of Christ.
[34:06] So David is a king, has all the resources in the world, and he takes a man's wife and he causes the man, he kills the man, he declares it. How does he live with that? Having mercy upon me, O God, Psalm 51, according to thy loving kindness, according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies, plot out my transgressions.
[34:25] Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgression and my sin is ever before me. Against thee and thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight.
[34:38] To bring your conscience to where it should be, to have that boldness because of the righteousness that God gave you, you first have to acknowledge that your sin before it was before anybody else was before the God of heaven.
[34:50] And that's what David is saying. That thou might be justified when thou speakest and be clear when thou judgest. Behold, I was shapen in iniquity and in sin that my mother conceived me. Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts and in the hidden part that shall make me to know wisdom.
[35:05] David's prayer, Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Do you know that God can do that to you? That regardless of what you have done in your life, that he is able to do that.
[35:20] Make me to hear joy and gladness that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice. Hide thy face from my sins and blot out all mine iniquity. Instead of me hiding my face and me hiding from God as the wicked man, now I'm asking God, you have said that you would hide yourself, your face from my sin.
[35:39] Instead of me hiding from you, you said that you would blot out my sins. And then verse 10, what a precious prayer. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
[35:51] Cast me not away from thy presence and take not the Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation and uphold me with thy free spirit. Then I will teach transgressors thy ways and sinners shall be converted unto thee.
[36:03] Deliver me from blood guiltiness, which is what David had, O God, thou God of my salvation. And my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness. O Lord, open thy lips and my mouth shall show forth thy praise.
[36:16] For thou desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it. Thou delightest not in burnt offerings. The sacrifice of God or a broken spirit. David could have brought anything that this world had to offer him, but God wanted a broken and contrite heart.
[36:29] O God, thou will not despise. Do good in thy pleasure in the Zion. Build thou the walls of Jerusalem. Then shalt thou be pleased with the sacrifice of righteousness with burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings.
[36:40] Then thou shalt offer brolicks to thine altar. I'm gonna pray for you and I'll ask Kristen to play. We'll just take a time for you to respond here at the altar or in your seat. But maybe verse 10 needs to be your prayer of the night.
[36:53] God, create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit in me. That the conscience that God has given you and the Holy Spirit has brought conviction in your life.
[37:05] And you know that you are just like Adam and that if God was to walk through your home, he was to walk through this place in the cool of the day, you would not be there waiting for you, but you would hide because your guilt has caused you want to flee him.
[37:20] And what you could do today, you could enter into his presence with a boldness. It's not something that you're gonna make up and merit. It's nothing that you can say over the next 20 years, I'll try to undo the damage I've done.
[37:33] But the righteousness of Jesus Christ is available, that the blood of Christ can purge you and can clean you and give you that clean right standing before the God of heaven.
[37:45] Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I thank you for your words. Father, I think about the story of that man that said, I wish that somebody would have come before the shame has come.
[37:57] So Lord, I pray that if there's anyone in here today that is living with that shame, that they are a believer, Lord, but they have just lived in such a place like David, where they have allowed something in their life that has not been addressed, that they would pray to you, Lord, that we would pray and say, search our heart, O God, say if there'd be any wicked way in us.
[38:18] And so, Lord, we will ask for forgiveness, knowing that you can make us whiter than snow. Lord, there's such joy in your presence. I want all of us, Lord, to enjoy that.
[38:29] I want to enjoy life in your presence, not in hiding, but living in the light. Lord, I pray that you'd help my brothers and sisters, Lord, as they will spend time speaking to you. They'll have your head bowed, never had closed, the Christian place.
[38:41] Let's take a moment. Would you pray to the Lord? Leave the night bold with the righteousness that has been given to you. Don't leave as somebody that would flee. Ask God to search your heart.