[0:00] We're reading today from 1 Samuel chapter 24. When Saul returned from following the Philistines, he was told, Behold, David is in the wilderness of En Gedi.
[0:13] Then Saul took three thousand chosen men out of all Israel and went to seek David and his men in front of the wild goats' rocks. And he came to the sheepfolds by the way, where there was a cave.
[0:25] And Saul went in to relieve himself. Now David and his men were sitting in the innermost parts of the cave. And the men of David said to him, Here's the day of which the Lord said to you, Behold, I will give your enemy into your hand, and you shall do to him as it shall seem good to you.
[0:46] Then David arose and stealthily cut off a corner of Saul's robe. And afterward, David's heart struck him because he had cut off a corner of Saul's robe.
[0:56] He said to his men, The Lord forbid that I should do this thing to my Lord, the Lord's anointed, to point out my hand against him, seeing he is the Lord's anointed.
[1:09] So David persuaded his men with these words and did not permit them to attack Saul. And Saul rose up and left the cave and went on his way. Afterward, David also arose and went out of the cave and called after Saul, My Lord, the king!
[1:26] And when Saul looked behind him, David bowed with his face to the earth and paid homage. And David said to Saul, Why do you listen to the words of men who say, Behold, David seeks your harm.
[1:38] Behold, this day your eyes have seen how the Lord gave you today into my hand in the cave. And some told me to kill you, but I spared you.
[1:50] I said, I will not put out my hand against my Lord, for he is the Lord's anointed. See, my father, see the corner of your robe in my hand.
[2:01] For by the fact that I cut off the corner of your robe and did not kill you, you may know and see that there is no wrong or treason in my hands.
[2:11] I have not sinned against you, though you hunt my life to take it. May the Lord judge between me and you. May the Lord avenge me against you, but my hand shall not be against you.
[2:24] As the proverb of the ancients say, Out of the wicked comes wickedness. But my hand shall not be against you. After whom has the king of Israel come out?
[2:35] After whom do you pursue? After a dead dog? After a flea? May the Lord therefore be judged and give sentence between me and you and see to it and plead my cause and deliver me from your hand.
[2:50] As soon as David had finished speaking these words to Saul, Saul said, Is this your voice, my son David? And Saul lifted up his voice and wept.
[3:00] He said to David, You are more righteous than I, for you have repaid me good, whereas I have repaid you evil. And you have declared this day how you have dealt well with me, in that you did not kill me when the Lord put me into your hands.
[3:16] For if a man finds his enemy, will he let him go away safe? So may the Lord reward you with good for what you have done to me this day. And now, behold, I know that you shall surely be king and that the kingdom of Israel shall be established in your hand.
[3:34] Swear to me, therefore, by the Lord that you will not cut off my offspring after me and that you will not destroy my name out of my father's house. And David swore this to Saul.
[3:47] Then Saul went home, but David and his men went up to the stronghold. Boy, it's great to be gathered.
[4:00] I did not realize if I would get well enough by Sunday to be here today. So praise the Lord. I got more sleep in the past week than I have, I think, since before kids.
[4:12] But it's not, it's nothing to brag about. I was feeling pretty ill. And, but our family is, is doing just fine.
[4:23] We're on the mend, so I appreciate your prayers for that. And quite a passage today as we're, we're continuing in the series of 1 Samuel and studying through that book specifically.
[4:38] And, I want you to consider a riddle as, you can call me the riddler this morning.
[4:50] That'll be good. What am I? I'm always with you. In fact, I stalk you. I am your greatest adversary, but I'm your, also your greatest ally.
[5:11] I will make you cry tears of joy, and I will also make you cry tears of pain. What am I?
[5:25] I'll give you a clue. It's not your in-laws. We'll just clear that up in the front end, okay? We're going to preserve marriages this morning. It's not your ex-lover as well.
[5:37] God. This adversary and ally is known as the conscience. The conscience.
[5:48] And however you might define that or depict that in your minds, pop culture has made us think that it's the little angel and the devil sitting on your shoulders as you're torn between right and wrong.
[6:04] James Madison, the fourth president of the United States, he considers the conscience the most sacred of all property. He considers it a property.
[6:15] Vincent van Gogh, one of my favorite painters, famous Dutch painter, he defines the conscience as a man's compass. John MacArthur, faithful pastor in California, defines the conscience as a built-in warning system that signals us when we have done wrong.
[6:38] 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.
[6:55] Whatever our definition is of the conscience, there is undoubtedly a God-given capacity uniquely to human beings to morally feel.
[7:10] To feel. It is intrinsic to human beings, actually. It's subjective, often, based upon human judgment or objectively according to something like God's Word or His law.
[7:25] And the Holy Spirit within the life of a believer uses the conscience of a believer even more uniquely to convict, to encourage, to counsel, to guide, but even to a non-believer.
[7:43] The Holy Spirit uses the conscience of a non-believer to convict of sin just as we saw in the book of John. Paul appealed to having a clear and good conscience at a number of times in his epistles to churches.
[7:57] Martin Luther, standing in the assembly of Worms, Germany in 1512, stood there saying, I cannot recant my statements.
[8:08] He was renouncing that because that would be going against his conscience where Martin Luther says, it is neither safe, it's neither right nor safe. Here I stand. And however, depending upon the calibration of a conscience, it's like a well-tuned piano.
[8:27] It can be pleasing to those with that well-tuned piano. It can be pleasing to all arounds. But, when that piano is not tuned, it can be the most dissonant noise that could ever play in our lives.
[8:46] And in 1 Samuel, we've been in this series that has kind of been the man on the run. David has been evading the enemy of Saul, the enemy of the Philistines.
[9:00] He's constantly, the enemy is sneaking up and about to grab him and get him, and he slips away. Some by his clever ingenuity, acting like a madman scratching at a wall, as we saw, or by God sovereignly ordaining things and providentially guiding there to be an attack back in Israel and disarming Saul and his men to go and leave David on the hill where we saw the rock of escape not long ago.
[9:32] Today's passage is a vivid and living reminder of the power of the conscience as we strive to live obedient lives to God. And so, for that, we turn to the passage today in a sermon titled simply The Power of the Conscience.
[9:48] And what we have today is two sections in this narrative. And before we dive in any further, I would like to pray for a moment for myself and also all of our hearts this morning.
[10:05] Let's pray. Father, we come to You as being sovereign over all, sovereign over our hearts, sovereign over our lives, sovereign over our intellect, sovereign over the hours of preparation that was lost earlier in this week due to illness, sovereign over all the preparation for a message on Sunday for Your church to hear from You.
[10:37] You're sovereign over it all. With that, we submit ourselves to Your sovereignty this morning. Humble us and help us to see the power of the conscience this morning.
[10:52] Let us not just know something, let's do something as the church as well. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. The first section I have titled, I'm going to be playing upon that untuned piano and the power of a poorly tuned conscience.
[11:14] In verse 1, we have the scene setting, David is in the wilderness of En Gedi. And this is a pretty good place to hide.
[11:28] I've been getting, I was on a roll this week with sermon slides with the Pentecost Sunday reflection, so let's keep it going. Check this picture out. Look at that, bonus points.
[11:39] Elders, take note. This is where David was hiding. In some place looking like that. It looks like that was actually a scene from Star Wars where the little eyes come out of the hills.
[11:56] But this was in Gedi. It was a clever place to hide. It had crannies. It was a hillside. Hillside overlooking the Red Sea.
[12:08] That means that they had water supply. They had coverage from the enemy. This was a pretty good place to hide. You could probably live there in a hill down by the river or the sea for quite some time.
[12:22] It would work out for you. You had everything you needed. But David doesn't fly under the radar for very long. Saul gets informed of his location and pursues.
[12:36] Imagine that. Saul getting wind of where David is again. In verse 2 the narrative gets very quickly developed. And look with me. Don't take my word for it.
[12:48] Have your Bible open. Put your finger on verse 2 as we go through. Look at verse 2. We have two armies going on here. They're assembling each other.
[12:59] We have David having 600 rejected men. We'll just call them the rejects. And look how the narrator of this episode is making a point to say Saul had 3,000 not just ordinary men.
[13:17] These were chosen men in verse 2. You got the rejects and you got the chosen. And verse 3 lo and behold squatting at the entrance of a cave the very same place David is hiding.
[13:43] Saul relieving himself. Can you imagine out of any cave? I mean I want to be careful.
[13:54] Don't imagine too much. We do have some reverence here. But I mean I think there is a little bit of humor embedded within the story because it's humor that's related to just the providence of God.
[14:13] Back then they didn't have a rest stop on the way to En Gedi. Obviously you would just do that where you had it. It's an ideal setup. I mean personally if we want to get into it that's an ideal setup.
[14:25] You have a built-in bidet right in that stream of water going out from those rocks. Right? That's pretty kingly living. So the king takes a squat.
[14:36] We'll just say that. So in verse 4 it appears that this rising action narratives have rising action the tension of the passage that keeps you like what's going to happen next.
[14:50] And it seems the rising action begins with an opportunity. David is right there.
[15:02] The enemy is vulnerable. What's he going to do? Now is the time David. Go! Look! This is the day that the Lord said his men are like David what are you waiting for?
[15:17] I don't know if that was from disdain from the smell or possibly just an opportunity to act on behalf of God. He says Lord the Lord has given you this day.
[15:30] Behold the Lord said right? I will give the enemy into your hand and you shall do to him as it shall seem good to you.
[15:40] This is the day. In other words this is the promise of God. Go! David was quite convinced and I'd imagine quite riled up.
[15:58] Have you ever been in a high school locker room before a game? Ever seen a movie? I don't care what field we're running to when all the guys are riling you up we could be running off a cliff and we're going to do it loud and proudly.
[16:15] And I would imagine that in this scene but a little bit quieter. being down in the cave. Great commotion and persistence of his men.
[16:26] And David like a stealthy hobbit he sneaks up undetected close enough to access the garment of Saul.
[16:36] I would imagine that this stealthy action was probably due to that white noise of that stream flowing that you couldn't hear the footsteps. And Saul he didn't care we'll just be honest.
[16:49] He had plans to do there. So David sneaks up close enough to access his garments a knife that's sharp enough to slice his garment like butter.
[17:04] But wait. Tension in verse five. afterward there was something closer in proximity of Saul.
[17:21] There's something closer than the proximity of Saul to David or David to Saul. There's something sharper than a blade that cut David in verse five.
[17:37] David's heart struck him because he had cut off the corner of his garment. In other words, David's plan as pressured through groupthink by those all around him, he was disarmed at the call of his conscience because also hiding in this cave was his conscience and also the 600 other consciences that were hiding.
[18:13] They will all be found in a moment. I mean, can you imagine this playing out? After all the running, after all the insane tactics of David, this was the moment that you could only hope for.
[18:31] The enemy squatting unknown of what's going on around him with a knife sharp to cut a garment like butter.
[18:44] I'm sure it would be pretty good with somebody's throat as well. Everything was to his advantage. Could you think about the life that you would live after doing this very thing?
[18:58] You'd come out of that cave, no more hiding, all the pain is gone, no more running, and guess what? You could be king. But reverberating through the pages of Scripture is the phrase that stems from Genesis 3.
[19:21] Did God really say? And reverberating upon all human hearts is a conscience sensitive to that phrase at various levels and degrees.
[19:39] We know the condition of David's heart. His heart was after God. His heart was tuned and thus his heart cut him.
[19:55] That is simply to simply say no. What his men were saying that riled him up after thinking about it, that's not what God said.
[20:08] His men were mistakenly manipulating God's Word to suit their needs. They're sick of running around like a bunch of rejects hiding in caves. In fact, what these men were doing was taking God's Word out of context.
[20:25] Because the word referred to here is something we look back into last week's message in chapter 23 verse 4. As David is responding to his men's fear and he goes back and inquires of the Lord a second time, the Lord answers him emphatically.
[20:44] Remember last week? Arise, go down to Kyla, for I will give the Philistines into your hand. Last I checked, Saul was not a Philistine.
[21:03] We might think, well, I mean, close enough. Philistines are an enemy of God. Saul's an enemy of God. Man, David, just make a compromise here, buddy.
[21:13] come on, we're living like a bunch of nomads out here in the caves. Even we might think of it as odd.
[21:26] Just a corner of a robe causes this much distress and he cuts it? What's the big deal, David? Wimp?
[21:39] Cut to the heart. You've got a piece of robe. Big deal, right? We would say to David all these things on account of us getting out of our trouble.
[21:52] And the narrator is not allowing us to forget something vital because it isn't just a corner of a garment. It's not just a corner of a garment.
[22:06] We cannot forget the vital, symbolic nature that a torn garment holds. at this moment in the nation of Israel because it was more than just damage to Saul's robe.
[22:19] It was more than just sneaking up and appeasing your friends in the cave. 1 Samuel 15, going back in time a little bit, specifically verse 28, to the tearing of Samuel's garment from Saul was massively symbolic.
[22:44] And without seeing that, we're not going to understand what's going on here at all. We would say it's just a corner of the garments, but it really is not. So, Samuel to Saul says, the Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you this day and has given it to the neighbor of yours who is better than you.
[23:06] This is at the moment where Saul in desperation grabs Samuel's garment, rips it, and holds a piece in his hand. And at that moment, that torn garment represented the kingdom.
[23:20] And now years later in this cave of Gedi, this neighbor took it upon himself to take what God intended to give.
[23:35] Verse 6, David says, the Lord forbid that I should do this thing. David clearly understood that the kingdom was his.
[23:49] It was bound to be his someday, some way, but it was never meant to be taken by his own power. power. It was never meant to be taken by his own strength, his own stealth, his own timing, or his own frustration of constantly hiding and running in caves.
[24:15] You see, the urgency of an opportunity, church, the opportunity at hand, any urgency within, must never defy the guidance of the conscience within.
[24:27] Regardless of the urgency around, must never supersede the conflict that we have and the guidance that we have going on within. In fact, don't be surprised if God does place a test in your life from time to time to test your conscience.
[24:46] Verse 7, David persuaded his men of these words. our ESV is really hard to translate of what's going on here, but let's just put it in another way.
[24:58] David tore his men apart with his words. It was significant. Church, a misguided soul, whether in the world or in our seats as we know it here, is one person away from being deeply impacted by the conscience of another being retuned to God's Word.
[25:31] I've got to ask you if you might be that person in the room who might go against the grain, even in a minority rule situation, even in a desperate situation.
[25:46] even in a logical situation. Or are you the one who maybe no longer feels remorse for doing wrong? Your conscience at one point in your life kind of ate away at you?
[26:03] You've lost a lot of sleep at night, but now it's been so long habitually, cyclically, round and rounds of feeling that remorse that now you're sort of desensitized.
[26:17] You sleep well at night because you define your own truth, not by God's metric, but by your own. And maybe that's you today who operates with that mindset, and the only way to respond of being called out for that is to repent, to repent and turn from that.
[26:40] conscience. It's a delusion that you live in. To live in opposition to God and not feel remorse is a deep, dark place to be in.
[26:59] Saul was the epitome of a soul with an evil conscience that's described in Hebrews 10, 22, that doesn't turn away from evil. He had a seared conscience described in 1 Timothy 4, 2, whose conscience was seared, desensitized to evil.
[27:21] But one person could have made all the difference just as David's conscience made with those 600 men within that cave as he tore them apart with his words, speaking to 600 consciences around one.
[27:42] And I don't know about you, we could speculate here, but maybe, just maybe, at this point, 85 priests may still be living that were from Nob if only one conscience would stand against an evil one.
[28:00] You see, there is hope for a Christian, great hope for a non-Christian, more hope than you could ever imagine. Because Christ calls into this pit of desensitized darkness, and He calls for you to come.
[28:19] He calls into your pit and says, come. For David, the pressure within was greater than the pressure around.
[28:30] around. The pressure around was to conform, to do it their way. Yeah, God said something along those lines, so just do this, so we can get out of this stinking cave.
[28:44] The pressure within was greater than the pressure around, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, may this be true for us today, church, in this day.
[28:56] What's most fascinating, I think, about this narrative, as I've reflected on this week, is that the proximity of Saul and David, this assembling at this En-Gedi location, it seemed to naturally be what we would think that, like, that's developing tension, you know, mano-a-mano, whoop, they're facing each other in a cave, close proximity, that has to be the tension, but it, in fact, wasn't the tension, because guess what happens?
[29:33] It's very anticlimactic. Saul leaves. He buttons his jeans, puts his coat on, missing a corner, and walks out, and that's it.
[29:48] Instead, the tension is portrayed as the inner conscience of David. which is far from resolved, and only building.
[30:01] So, the tension, therefore, is the power of a dissonant conscience being retuned to God's Word. And we're going to see that develop here, because David does the unthinkable.
[30:18] In this second section, David exits the cave, and we see the power of a well-tuned conscience. Can you imagine this scene playing out in the second section?
[30:35] David's men still hiding in the depths of the cave, probably some of them crying, calling for their therapy dog, because David said bad words to them.
[30:47] consoling one another, grieving, repenting, and David leaves the cave and calls out.
[31:04] Just as Christ calls out to evil, wretched man, and He calls out to Saul. And in a grand rising of tension, David says, My Lord, the King.
[31:30] And when Saul looked behind him, David bowed with his face to the earth and paid homage.
[31:42] This was a compelling speech. church. Absolutely. Verse 9, David makes a speech considering his words, Why do you listen to the words of men that I seek to harm you?
[32:03] It's interesting because the reversal here is David's actions to reject the words of man to harm Saul. In verse 10 and 11, David says, I was given the opportunity, but the Lord would not allow me.
[32:22] Verse 12 and 14, David ultimately brings in some proverbs and says, The Lord is judged. The proverb is clear. Saul acted wickedly because he was wicked, but David used that proverb properly, positively in his favor to apply to himself because he was not acting out in wickedness.
[32:46] Ding, ding, ding, means he's not wicked. And so he applies that proverb positively in his favor. And if David was wicked, he would have acted out, but he did not.
[33:00] The Lord is judge. David's pleading, I'm not seeking harm to you. If I'm anything here, I'm a flea on a dead dog.
[33:12] That's who I am. Verse 15, May the Lord therefore be judge and give sentence between me and you, and see to it and plead my cause and deliver me from your hand.
[33:32] In other words, it was not Saul that David was submitting himself to, while he was bowed to Saul, acknowledged that he was, in an earthly sense, king.
[33:47] It was not Saul that David was submitting himself to, but rather it was to God that he submitted to. In that, David simply says, come what may, I cannot defy my conscience.
[34:03] according to my conscience, David was not wicked and would not be found guilty of ripping anything out of Saul's hand, that it would be given by God.
[34:22] You see, Saul's heart softening experience came not through the Lord's direct intervention upon him. It did not come from the sending of a spirit or removing a spirit.
[34:35] It came by the conscience within proximity of Saul. It came through the Lord's intervention of another to affect those around, not only those within a cave, but now Saul.
[34:52] And church, there will be times when all the voices around twist God's word, or maybe the urgency of the hour seems to twist God's timing. But a conscience guided by the Holy Spirit is unpliable by words or time.
[35:12] It is unpliable. And the scary reality, as it is, and as it were for Saul, and certainly true for a lost world, that it is dangerous, truly dangerous when man's words become louder and more impressionable than our conscience.
[35:38] And with the echo of David reaching all the rounds, could you imagine outside in this hill, I'm sure those thousands of men heard what was going on.
[35:50] This is the peak of that tension. David's men, I could imagine, are in that cave saying, yeah, we're dead. This was the speech of David's life.
[36:06] And we have to recall that it's easy for us to miss that tension because history, as we know it here, was moment by moment.
[36:17] David didn't know if he would turn around and just Saul would cut his head off. There was no telling, but he could not defy his conscience. He would rather die by the hands of Saul than defy his conscience.
[36:34] And as soon in verse 16 as David had finished speaking these words, you could probably hear a pin drop on this hill, you could probably hear your own heartbeat waiting to see what happens.
[36:47] and Saul speaks, is this your voice, my son, David? And Saul lifted up his voice and wept.
[37:06] It has been chapters, verses upon verses that Saul had ever referred to David as David.
[37:20] Saul's rage was disarmed at David's prudence. In other words, he was disarmed by the power of David's conscience.
[37:35] And he said to David, you are more righteous than I, he got that right, for you have repaid me good whereas I have repaid you evil and you have declared this day how you have dealt well with me in that you did not kill me when the Lord put me into your hands.
[37:56] For if a man finds his enemy, will he let him go away safe? So may the Lord reward you for the good that you have done to me this day.
[38:08] Why did Saul respond in such a way? Was it the realization that he was nearly a step away from death? Was it this sense of some loyalty from these people?
[38:25] That finally somebody's supporting him? Or better yet, was it that there was an agonizing pain within his own conscience accusing him of wrong?
[38:45] Regardless of how long that was short-lived, I do believe that that is the case here at this moment in history. And while I think Saul's response could very well attribute to a combination of all those things, that he was close to death, finally somebody's loyal to him, the activity of the conscience seems most compelling in the contrasting nature of this context and this narrative.
[39:10] And Saul makes this confession. You see that pressure within him welling up, arms open wide, and verse 20, here we have it, David, you shall be king.
[39:23] What? He was humbled to the point of even sacrificing his own throne. And guess what? The listening ears within the cave and outside the cave all heard it.
[39:38] Oh, it blew up on Twitter that day. It was everywhere. It went viral. And there was no sword to Saul's throat. You see, it was forced out of him by the power of conscience.
[39:54] This day was marked by an oath that we'll see play out in the couple chapters following. And David swore in verse 22 to protect Saul, and the two men simply departed different ways.
[40:09] And we'll pick up the narrative next week. But church, we have a better opportunity and a better chance of outrunning a lion than we have of outrunning our own conscience.
[40:21] more dangerous than a lion, sharper than any sword, is the conscience tuned to the beat of God's Word.
[40:34] You see, the tension of the narrative rises and falls not upon the actions of warfare around, but upon the warfare within. And David's heart was inflicted by an act of defying God's Word, and Saul's heart was inflicted at the truth of God's Word, even though it worked against him in this endless pursuit.
[40:59] Neither David nor Saul could evade the power of conscience. And church, to a world whose conscience may be clear, while living in sin, I'm sure the world who is lost in sin, as Romans 1 says, that they have seen the glory of God, and they still suppress the truth, I am sure that they're not losing too much sleep, they sleep well.
[41:22] I'm sure after slaughtering 85 priests, Saul probably slept well that night. But our commitment to a conscience tuned to the standards of God has more power over others than we may realize a single conscience infecting others.
[41:45] And if this is true, if that happened in the cave, if that happened outside this hill in En Gedi, have we been tuning our conscience?
[42:02] Has your conscience been tuned? Or is ours a little bit out of tune? Have you paid attention to its guidance?
[42:14] How often have you even considered your conscience this week? In either conviction or commendation? Have you even allowed maybe friendships to be severed at the fact that you cannot defy your conscience and somebody doesn't like it?
[42:40] We have to be careful with feelings. feelings. Feelings derived from a conscience remain subjective in the absence of the knowledge of God informing it.
[42:53] There has to be a metric and a standard that is absolute in balance and weight in truth and what is false.
[43:04] And unless a conscience is being tuned to the beat and the tool of the instrument of, and the tool of the Word of God, our conscience will be tuned subjectively and then be poorly tuned.
[43:21] Have you been tuning your conscience with the right things? In that, I'd be much more less inclined of how you feel or how you felt this week and care far more of what you know.
[43:36] love. And here rests the foundation of experiencing and living out godly emotion. The only instrument able to sufficiently tune a conscience is God's Word alone.
[43:49] You want to grow in godliness, right? Should be the aim of every Christian not to just be sedentary, sitting at your desk all day and just living, dying.
[44:01] Come, Lord Jesus, when you come. That's not a call to growing in godliness. That's staying in selfishness.
[44:12] God hasn't called you to that. You want to grow in godliness? Fill your mind with Scripture. Meditate upon God's law day and night. It's what the great physician prescribed.
[44:28] And sadly, it's so often neglected. As Christians, we aim for keeping our consciences clear. And it begins retuning according to God's law. And that the melody that we play in our lives and within our midst, and we come and gather as a beautiful symphony of clear consciences before the throne of God as a gathered church.
[44:52] So as we close, I want us to think about some tangible things. of how we begin to sing the melody of a clear conscience.
[45:04] Well, first off, God's Word describes sin. That's a good place to start, to know right and wrong, objective morality. And so if your life is not aligned with what the Bible says it should be aligned with or rebuke, what it should be rebuking, you ought to confess and forsake that sin and retune your life away from that sin.
[45:29] It takes work, labor, training, and righteousness. Also to ask forgiveness and be reconciled to anyone that you may have wronged, whether that being God or maybe other people within this room or within other congregations around.
[45:52] Praise God for Jesus Christ sending an advocate of forgiveness. forgiveness. Make restitution and reconcile to those you've wronged. Because the saying is true, forgiven people forgive people.
[46:09] And we must recognize that delayed restitution is as grievous as you not knowing that you broke the speed limit. Ignorant offenses.
[46:21] Delayed restitution is as grievous as not knowing the speed limit. Your conscience will not clear itself in time.
[46:32] Hate to tell you. It's not going to, the more you separate from an instance, it's not going to make you feel better. It will fester. It will generate depression in your life.
[46:44] It will bring about anxiety. It will bring about emotional issues. You'll feel it. And for that good, because God wants you to grow in godliness.
[46:56] Educate your conscience. A weak and easily grieved conscience always results from a lack of spiritual knowledge. And the list can go on and on.
[47:08] If you're not hearing and doing, if you're not applying God's Word, if you're not renewing your hearts, or even having compassion and love for those who have a weaker conscience, how could they wear a hat in church?
[47:27] Well, the conscience of others hasn't been convicted of that. Nor is there anything in the Bible that would not allow.
[47:38] We get so silly in our lives with weaker consciences. Church, God intended the church to play the melody of a multi-part symphony, and you all have instruments in your hands.
[48:01] The symphony plays well-tuned to God's law. We all play a part in it, and how different the story of David would have ended if had his conscience not overpowered him that day.
[48:20] He would have been king. Yeah, that's right. Things would have been easier. That's right. But it wasn't God's way. Church, pay attention to your conscience.
[48:31] It may be exactly what your spouse needs you to do. It may be exactly what your friends and your neighbors need you to do. And it's definitely what the world needs us to do.
[48:43] Most of all, above all that, it's what the Lord desires in our lives, for our lives, unto His glory. Let's pray. Amen. Let's pray.
[48:54] Let's pray. Let's pray.