I want to begin our time by giving you a lot to think about. There is a risk we will lose each other along the way, or that I will give you a headache.  But if we can think through the beginning of the message, we will indeed learn together something exceptionally important to our lives as Christians and to the church.  So, I think it is worth the risk. 

I want to begin talking about our conscience.  Everyone has a conscience.  Our conscience is not a visible thing.  It is within us but cannot be found by medical examination. Though invisible and unlocatable, our conscience is always at work.  Our conscience serves as a translator between what we believe and what we say and do. It listens very carefully to what we believe and then sends guidance to our mouth about what we should say and to our limbs about what we should do.  Oftentimes, usually in cartoons, a character is depicted as having a good conscience and a bad conscience.  The cartoon character is then left to listen to both and decides which conscience to follow. This is cartoonish for sure, as we do not possess two consciences but only one.  Humans are the only earthly beings that have a conscience.  Animals do not.  Likewise, only humans have beliefs that inform our conscience. Animals do not have beliefs.

So we return to the question: what, then, is our conscience? Our conscience was once a blank slate, which was then shaped by our beliefs to guide us every day, in every moment. Our beliefs inform our conscience, writing upon it what has been learned and experienced in the past to guide words and deeds in the future.  Our natural conscience is neither good nor bad.  It is just an instrument tuned by our beliefs to guide our behaviors.  Our conscience is not random; it is deliberate. It keeps a check on our emotions to make sure that our words and actions are consistent with our beliefs.  When our emotions want to drive our response, our conscience checks in with our beliefs.  Our beliefs set the path for our conscience to follow, and our conscience keeps checking our beliefs when our emotions want to change our direction. Hopefully, we are all still together.

Why all this discussion on beliefs, conscience, and emotion?  We ventured this way because the Apostle Paul gave his spiritual son, Timothy, instructions for the Christian faith and for leading a church.  In a letter that we call 1 Timothy, Paul said, “18 Timothy, my son, I am giving you this command in keeping with the prophecies once made about you, so that by recalling them you may fight the battle well, 19 holding on to faith [beliefs] and a good conscience, which some have rejected and so have suffered shipwreck with regard to the faith” (1 Timothy 1:18-19).  Paul linked beliefs and a good conscience as necessary for a proper Christian life, and for Timothy in leading the church in Ephesus.  Paul said that, absent faith, taken here to mean a belief in Christ, and a good conscience, the inevitable result would be a shipwrecked life.  To be shipwrecked is to have run ourselves into rocks and now find ourselves floating in the water, alone, drifting not in any direction we desire but as the will of the waves and winds surrounding us would have us go.  We probably know some people who are living shipwrecked lives.  Being shipwrecked is a dreadful place to be.  We should therefore try to understand what Paul meant when he told Timothy that his life must be based on faith and a good conscience.

Paul began his instruction to Timothy this way, “3 As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain people not to teach false doctrines any longer 4 or to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. Such things promote controversial speculations rather than advancing God’s work, which is by faith. 5 The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. 6 Some have departed from these and have turned to meaningless talk. 7 They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not know what they are talking about or what they so confidently affirm” (1 Timothy 1:3-7). Paul began reminding Timothy that he must begin his work at the church in Ephesus by commanding certain people to stop teaching false doctrines.  Paul went on to say that these people want to be teachers of the law, but they do not know what they are talking about or what they are so confident about.  Paul was describing a serious condition in the church.  Some people did not know what they were talking about, yet they were confident in what they said.  Just because someone speaks confidently does not mean they are saying something true.  This is the very meaning of the term “con man,” or “confidence man.”  It refers to a person who speaks with great confidence but with deceptive information and intent. 

What were these teachers teaching that was such a concern? Paul alludes to the fact that they were teaching myths, endless genealogies, and meaningless talk.  We would read elsewhere that some were teaching that the final resurrection had already occurred.  We still have people claiming Christ who teach similar false things.

• Jehovah's Witnesses teach that there is no hell, Jesus was just an angel, and that he returned in 1914, although His return was invisible.
• The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormons, teaches that faithful members can become exalted, becoming like God the Father, exalted as gods in the highest degree of the celestial kingdom. They also believe the Book of Mormon is another testament of God’s Word, along with the Old and New Testaments.
• Members of the Unitarian Universalist Church believe that it does not really matter what you believe about God, or even if you believe in God, as everyone will receive salvation, even though they don’t believe in hell.

Sadly, many of these false teachings are creeping into mainline Protestant denominations through Progressive Christianity.  If you listen to these Protestant pastors and teachers, they speak confidently that there is no hell, that Satan does not exist, that Jesus did not rise from the dead, that Jesus was an unenlightened chauvinist toward women, and on and on. All of what they teach, Paul would say, is false and should be stopped because such false teachings or unsound doctrine lead to false beliefs among the people.  And false beliefs lead to the development of an unsound conscience.

            If Paul was concerned about unsound doctrine, what did Paul consider sound doctrine?  I think one of the earliest statements of sound Christian doctrine was captured by Paul in his letter to the Colossians.  In the middle of the first chapter, Paul stopped speaking and recited a very early Christian hymn that offered a concise, sound statement of doctrine.  The hymn said:

“15 The Son [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. 19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross” (Colossians 1:15-20).

The truth, the sound doctrine, was that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah, and through Him we are reconciled to God.  How did Jesus reconcile us?  By shedding his blood upon the cross.  This sound doctrine was and remains the basis of Christian beliefs. The acceptance of these beliefs in Jesus was and remains the basis of our salvation.  To believe in this doctrine is a matter of faith.  Faith is a trust in God, His Word, and His power to make true all that He has said.

Now, acceptance by faith that Jesus is above all and is the guarantor of our salvation is not just a mental agreement.  When we accept Jesus as above all, that is Lord over our lives, and as our Savior, the one granting salvation, by the forgiveness of sin, Jesus changes us.  He sends the Holy Spirit to live within us.  The Holy Spirit, Jesus said, will teach us all things and remind us of the things Jesus has said.  Why? So that we can say and do those things in imitation of Jesus (John 14:26).  What is it that guides what humans say and do?  It is their conscience.  So when we believe in Christ, our faith is set on sound doctrine; we become a new person; and our conscience, swept clean by the Holy Spirit, is transformed into a good conscience.  We can now see the connection Paul made in his opening words to Timothy: Timothy and each member of the church must have a life based on “19 holding on to faith [beliefs] and a good conscience” (1 Timothy 1:19a).  The same holds for us today.  Our lives as Christians must be based upon faith and a good conscience.  Faith in Christ and a conscience that guides our words and deeds are made good by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

How then do Paul’s words of instruction apply to us today? There are two ways.

First, we, individually and as a church, must be believers of sound doctrine.  Not a doctrine that sounds good to us because the person presenting it does so confidently. But sound doctrine derived directly from the Scriptures.  Paul said in 1 Thessalonians, “19 Do not quench the Spirit. 20 Do not treat prophecies with contempt 21 but test them all; hold on to what is good, 22 reject every kind of evil” (1 Thessalonians 5:19-21).  Our faith beliefs must be based upon Scripture.

Balthasar Hübmaier, a former Roman Catholic priest who would become a 17th-century Anabaptist theologian, said, “Searching the Scriptures does not take place with unspiritual chatter about innovations, nor with wordy warfare fighting until one is hoarse, but rather by illuminating the darker text of Scripture with the clearer.”  Our beliefs, our faith, must be based upon God’s Word.  Hübmaier went a step further and said, ““If they [my beliefs] should not be right and Christian, I beg you all through Jesus Christ our only Savior, I plead and admonish you by reason of the last judgment, please correct me in a brotherly and Christian way with Scripture; for I may err, I am a human being; but a heretic I cannot be.”  We should welcome being corrected by Scripture when our doctrine or beliefs are found to be inconsistent with it.  We must be of sound doctrine.

Second, we must cooperate with the Holy Spirit to follow our good conscience.  Paul, in his letter to the church in Galatia, observed the difference between a conscience developed by human experience and a good conscience made good by the Holy Spirit. Paul said some members of the church, before coming to Christ, acted in accordance with their human conscience with acts of the flesh, “Sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20 idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21 and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Galatians 5:19b-21).  But having been transformed by Christ and having the Holy Spirit living within them, the good conscience should guide people to speak and act in “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23).  Having accepted Jesus, we ought to act with a good conscience.

So, let’s admit it as the Apostle Paul did.  “15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do” (Romans 7:15).  What happens when we do not follow our beliefs and our good conscience?  Are we not new creations in Christ, seeking the fruit of the Spirit, yet we act like our old selves, moved by envy, jealousy, anger, bitterness, and pride? What happens to us?

There are usually one of two things that happen to us.  First, the truth is our old self died, and we become a new creation in Christ.  But we also know that there is not a person in our life who was an important part of our life who has died who is not also part of our memories.  I remember my mother and father well, even though they have both died.  Sometimes I will say something and think, “Wow, my mother or father used to say the same thing.  I have become my parents.”  Similarly, I still remember the person I was who died to Christ.  Those memories will always remain with me.  Sometimes, I will say the very thing I do not wish to say and think, “Wow, that is the way I used to speak.”  Sometimes, we allow the emotions and desires from our sinful past to run ahead of our good conscience.  In those moments, we must allow our good conscience to convict us to seek forgiveness.  There is no shame in seeking forgiveness.  It is an act of living out our beliefs and following our good conscience.

The second thing that can happen that causes us to behave in a manner different from our beliefs and good conscience is that we have given Satan a seat at our table.  Here is how I want you to visualize this point.  Psalm 23, one that we have all heard and recited numerous times, says this, “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies” (Psalm 23:5a).  Let’s take one enemy here, Satan.  “You [God] prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemy [Satan] (Psalm 23:5). Note that God set the table for you and did not include a seat at the table for Satan.  You are invited to eat and enjoy the richest of fare, while Satan is left to watch.  But Satan is not silenced.  He can still speak while we eat, and he will.  Satan is the ultimate confidence man, telling us unsound doctrine, puffing us up, and tearing us down with comparisons to others.  All of Satan’s chatter is intended for us to do one thing: for us to invite him to sit down at the table the Lord has set for us.  So when we act in ungracious ways, in ways that conflict with our good conscience, check and see if you invited Satan to sit down at your table.  Are you believing some lie or a half-truth?  Has pride entered your thinking?  Then Satan is sitting at the table meant for you and you alone.  Kick him out. God did not intend for him to dine with you.  Use this image to see if the enemy is poking holes in your good conscience.

Today, we will celebrate the Lord’s Supper.  It is a table set for you and me.  It is a table that represents the sound doctrine of faith and is given to refresh and nourish our good conscience.  Let us come together now in faith and good conscience and eat in the presence of our enemy, who has no place at the table.  Amen and Amen.