The Danger of a Seared Conscience

• Sermon Series Introduction: [Acts 23](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts+23&version=KJV) and the Apostle Paul [00:23:09 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor introduces a series on Acts 23-28, tracing Paul's transformation from persecutor to martyr and his intentional choice to remain in the Roman judicial system to spread the gospel.
• The Definition and Function of Conscience [00:27:43 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor defines conscience as 'within knowledge' (con + science), describing it as an inner courtroom that judges right and wrong, distinct from the Holy Spirit but influenced by it.
• The Danger of Rejecting Conscience [00:32:10 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor warns that rejecting one's conscience leads to 'shipwreck' of faith and life, citing 1 Timothy 1:19 as a biblical mandate to hold fast to a good conscience.
• Conscience and Spiritual Shipwreck [00:32:19 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor warns that rejecting one's conscience leads to a 'shipwreck of faith' and ruining one's life, using the metaphor of a plane without a warning system.
• Baptism and Salvation [00:36:21 ▶️ 📄]
  > Clarifies that water baptism does not save; rather, it symbolizes the spiritual reality of being washed by the blood of Jesus Christ through faith.
• Types of Conscience [00:35:06 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor outlines four types of consciences, beginning with the 'good conscience' (feeling good when doing good, bad when doing bad) and the 'defiled conscience' (calibrated by the world rather than the Word).
• Defiled Conscience [00:43:19 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor defines a defiled conscience as one calibrated by the world rather than the Word, resulting in reversed moral discernment.
• Conformity vs. Transformation [00:44:13 ▶️ 📄]
  > Using Romans 12:2, the pastor explains that the world tries to 'mold' believers into its image, while believers must be transformed by renewing their minds.
• Parental Responsibility and Media [00:46:18 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor urges parents to exercise authority over their children's friendships and media consumption to prevent the normalization of sin in their children's consciences.
• Seared Conscience [00:50:35 ▶️ 📄]
  > Described using analogies of calloused hands and seared steaks, this is a conscience that has lost feeling due to prolonged exposure to sin, likened to a sociopath.
• Community Accountability [00:54:02 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor advocates for a 'band of brothers/sisters' and deputizing community members to call individuals back when their conscience fails.
• Accountability and Community [00:54:32 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor argues for the necessity of 'deputizing' a 'band of brothers or sisters' to provide honest feedback and correction when one wanders from God's will.
• Weak Conscience [00:56:18 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor defines a 'weak conscience' as an overactive, hypersensitive conscience that labels non-sins as sins, often leading to condemnation of others and a distorted view of God.
• God's Character and Repentance [01:00:03 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor contrasts the view of God as an angry judge with the biblical view of God as a loving Father who eagerly welcomes back repentant sinners, using the Parable of the Prodigal Son.
• Adoption and Identity in Christ [01:07:07 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor defines the believer's identity as a child of God adopted through Christ's sacrifice, emphasizing that this status is immediate upon conversion.
• Spiritual Growth and Imperfection [01:07:26 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor encourages new believers who struggle with difficult texts (like genealogies) or attendance consistency, framing their 'imperfect steps' as victories that God celebrates.
• Public Baptism [01:08:16 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor issues a direct call for those who have been saved but not yet baptized to publicly profess their faith, addressing logistical concerns and urging immediate obedience.

• Sermon Illustration [00:21:51 ▶️ 📄]
  > A joke about a man who stole lumber to build homes for his family and a vacation home, and when the priest suggests a prayer retreat, the man replies he can build the plans if given the lumber.
• Sermon Illustration [00:26:02 ▶️ 📄]
  > An analogy comparing Paul's willingness to die for the gospel to the Star Wars scene where a photon torpedo is sent down the vent shaft of the Death Star to destroy it.
• Sermon Illustration [00:24:58 ▶️ 📄]
  > A reference to the movie Iron Man, specifically the plot point where Iron Man trades his life to kill Thanos, used to illustrate Paul's sacrificial intent.
• Sermon Illustration [00:34:18 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor uses an analogy of a plane without a warning system to describe a person who has rejected their conscience so much that they can sin and feel nothing.
• Sermon Illustration [00:38:50 ▶️ 📄]
  > A story about a USS Missouri captain trying to signal a ship to move, only to discover the 'ship' is actually a lighthouse, illustrating how a good conscience makes one a fixed point of truth (lighthouse) amidst worldly pressure.
• Sermon Illustration [00:44:29 ▶️ 📄]
  > An analogy about pouring concrete and setting a mold to explain the Greek word for 'pattern' in Romans 12:2, illustrating how the world molds a person's conscience.
• Sermon Illustration [00:44:29 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor uses the analogy of pouring concrete into a mold to explain how the world tries to shape believers, contrasting it with the need for God's Word to be the true mold.
• Sermon Illustration [00:46:18 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor shares a personal anecdote about his own children (ages 15, 11, 6) and his decision to restrict social media to protect their consciences from harmful content.
• Sermon Illustration [00:48:51 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor contrasts his 'crotchety grandpa' who allowed war movies (celebrating honor) but disliked Disney shows with two parents, arguing that the war movies were morally safer because they celebrated good vs. evil.
• Sermon Illustration [00:50:59 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor uses the analogy of a construction worker's hands developing calluses from hammering to explain how repeated sin makes the conscience thick and unfeeling.
• Sermon Illustration [00:51:59 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor uses the analogy of searing a steak at high heat to explain how prolonged exposure to sin 'sears' the conscience, making it tough and impermeable to God's love or law.
• Sermon Illustration [00:54:47 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor shares his personal practice of sending emails to his elders and executive team asking them to 'deputize' him by telling him what he needs to stop doing, start doing, or keep doing.
• Sermon Illustration [00:54:47 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor shares a personal anecdote about his own accountability structure, detailing how he asks his elders and executive team to 'pull no punches' and tell him what he needs to start, stop, or keep doing.
• Sermon Illustration [00:56:29 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor uses the historical context of the Corinthian church, where converts from idol worship struggled with eating meat sacrificed to false gods, to illustrate the concept of a 'weak conscience' that is hypersensitive to things the Bible does not forbid.
• Sermon Illustration [01:02:18 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor retells the Parable of the Prodigal Son, emphasizing that the father does not wait for a long apology speech but immediately runs to embrace the returning son, illustrating God's eager acceptance of repentance.
• Sermon Illustration [01:04:30 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor tells a story about his daughter, who was born with a disproportionately large head, struggling to pull herself up and take her first steps due to gravity and weak neck muscles, eventually succeeding as her muscles strengthened.
• Sermon Illustration [01:05:15 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor shares a personal story about his daughter learning to walk. He describes how she would pull herself up using a ball, look at him with a 'mischievous glint,' and then fall back down. He emphasizes that instead of calling her a 'loser,' he and his wife cheered for her 'one imperfect step.' He uses this as an analogy for God's reaction to new believers taking their first spiritual steps.

• Pastoral Charge [00:33:14 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor prays for the Holy Spirit to awaken the congregation to their spiritual state and save them from impending ruin.
• Pastoral Charge [00:33:32 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor commands the congregation to verbally repeat a statement about rejecting conscience and suffering shipwreck.
• Pastoral Charge [00:35:35 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor asks the congregation to internally ask God to identify their type of conscience.
• Pastoral Charge [00:47:43 ▶️ 📄]
  > Parents are commanded to step in and make decisive choices regarding their children's media consumption and friendships to protect their consciences.
• Pastoral Charge [00:50:15 ▶️ 📄]
  > Fathers are urged to stand up and actively fight for the spiritual and moral hearts of their children.
• Pastoral Charge [00:55:21 ▶️ 📄]
  > Congregants are instructed to 'deputize' specific individuals in their lives to provide direct, unfiltered feedback on their behavior and spiritual alignment.
• Pastoral Charge [00:54:47 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor models the action of actively seeking accountability by emailing his leadership team to ask for correction.
• Pastoral Charge [00:55:30 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor commands the congregation to formally appoint ('deputize') trusted individuals to hold them accountable for their spiritual walk.
• Pastoral Charge [01:10:09 ▶️ 📄]
  > Stand up and move to the designated location (crosses at Rockwall, back of auditorium elsewhere) to begin the baptism process.
• Pastoral Charge [01:10:35 ▶️ 📄]
  > Immediately begin walking to the baptism area.

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_01]
[00:00:00] Well, hey, Church Online. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Hey, it is great to have you here. If we haven't met, my name is Carlos and I serve as pastor of Digital Discipleship. And hey, you could be watching from somewhere across the globe, somewhere in Texas or right here in the DFW area. You might even perhaps be in your living room or maybe with your kids sitting in a car, wherever you are. Maybe you're tuning in for the first time or you've never actually been to any of our campuses. No matter where you're watching from, listen to this, you are not here by accident.
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[00:10:17] so glad you're here we hope today's service encourages you grows your faith and helps you take your next step with jesus and everyone else joining from outside the u.s man i we love that to see how god is working around the world we're so thankful with us and we're praying that the
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[00:11:00] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_09]
[00:11:00] Everyone joining us online, welcome, welcome, welcome.

[00:16:50] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_01]
[00:16:50] This is Baptism Weekend, and later in today's service, we'll celebrate something incredibly powerful, a high number of people publicly declaring that Jesus has changed their lives.
[00:17:01] Hey, baptism is an outward expression of an inward transformation or change after somebody has met Jesus.
[00:17:06] It is a bold step of obedience that shows the world your life is forever changed because of Christ.
[00:17:12] And so if you're ready to take that step, we would love to help you move forward and as we celebrate life change together let this also be a reminder of something deeply important following jesus was never meant to be in isolation hebrews
[00:17:27] chapter 10 calls us not to neglect gathering together but to encourage one another and spur each other in the faith god designed us to grow stronger when we stay connected to his people and so here's what we want you to know church online is such a gift and we're incredibly thankful for
[00:17:43] it because it allows us to reach people across the dfw area throughout texas and literally around the nation and across the globe with the hope of jesus but while online ministry can inspire encourage and sustain you in difficult seasons scott's design is bigger than simply
[00:17:57] just watching from a distance he created us for real discipleship real relationships and real spiritual family lived out in community so here's my encouragement to you wherever you're tuning in from today we want to help you take your next step and so if you're in or near dfw we'd absolutely
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[00:18:31] and now i will say this if you are outside of the dfw area our heart for you is just as strong we want to help you find a healthy local church where you can build relationships serve faithfully
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[00:19:21] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_03]
[00:19:21] hey lake point join us next weekend for mother's day on may 9th and 10th as we celebrate the incredible women in our lives start making plans to bring your mom or mother figure to church for
[00:19:36] a powerful message and a special gift. For details, head to lp.events. Students, United XL Hawaiian Night is this Wednesday, May 6th. It's going to be an incredible night with worship, inflatables, and free snow cones. Doors open at 6 30 at every campus, so bring your friends and find
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[00:20:17] just text APP to 20411. Now, let's kick off our series, There Is More, End Game.

[00:20:25] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_06]
[00:20:25] All right, well, good morning, Lake Point family. Hey, man, it's going to be a good day.
[00:20:56] It's going to be a good day. We're about to have a big old party. Hey, you know, your campus pastor mentioned this, but at all of our campuses, we will today, I think based on what we saw last
[00:21:08] night, I think we will baptize more than 700 people across all of our services and campuses.
[00:21:14] And yeah, man. So we got a bunch of people in these blue little t-shirts. We're going to dunk them. It's going to be awesome. And I'm going to go ahead and give you a heads up. If you have
[00:21:22] never bent your knee to the Lordship of Jesus and or been baptized subsequent to your salvation in obedience to the commands of Jesus Christ, we're gonna give you a chance to do that and it's gonna be awesome at the end of this service.
[00:21:35] So we gotta get right at it.
[00:21:37] If you've got your Bibles, head over to Acts 23.
[00:21:40] Acts 23 is where we're gonna be today.
[00:21:43] And let me lead into it like this.
[00:21:47] I've never preached a sermon on what I'm talking about today.
[00:21:51] There was a guy that went to confession and when he got there, he confessed to the priest that he'd been taking, stealing supplies from the lumber yard where he worked for many years.
[00:22:04] And the priest asked, well, what did you take?
[00:22:06] And, you know, long pause and he reflected and he said, well, I took enough to build my own home, a home for my son, a home for each of my two daughters and a vacation home at the lake.
[00:22:17] And the priest was like, man, this is very serious.
[00:22:22] I'm gonna have to think of a very big penance for you to do to make up for this sin.
[00:22:27] And after a while, the priest thought, and he said, have you ever done a prayer retreat?
[00:22:32] And the man paused for a minute, and he said, no, Father, I haven't, but if you give me the plans, I can get the lumber.
[00:22:38] Okay, now, here's the point, that's a stupid joke, here's the point, today I want to talk about what can happen when you sin so much, you can't feel it anymore.
[00:22:54] Here's what we're doing.
[00:22:55] And let me get a run and start into Acts 23.
[00:22:59] The reason that we're calling this series is gonna run from now into the summer right before at the movies is this series is there is more end game.
[00:23:09] What you're seeing is from here to the end of the book of Acts, it's about the apostle Paul.
[00:23:14] Now, if you miss this, the apostle Paul, he gets saved in Acts 9.
[00:23:19] And then he immediately, so he begins the book of Acts as a religious terrorist that was beheading Christians.
[00:23:25] And then the events that we're gonna preach from now to the end of the series lead up to, in Acts 28, they go into Acts 29 that doesn't exist.
[00:23:33] That's like what happens after Acts.
[00:23:35] It ends with Paul being beheaded for the sake of the gospel.
[00:23:39] So he begins as the dude killing Christians.
[00:23:43] He ends as a Christian killed for being a Christian.
[00:23:47] And I just wanna say, man, if your buddy dragged you here to watch him get baptized, and you're like, dude, you're not on this Team Jesus thing, and you're real hesitant, I just want to say, watch out. It'll get on you. God can use anybody. And you see this in the life
[00:24:00] of the apostle Paul. Now, what you're going to see is in Acts 9, Paul gets saved. In Acts 14, he starts his first missionary journey. So watch this. As soon as God rescues him, he puts him on the rescue team. That's what God does with all of us. So again, some of you,
[00:24:16] you'll look at a guy like me and you'll be like, man, Josh, I can never be a Christian like you.
[00:24:21] hey hey that's your advantage not your disadvantage because a whole bunch of people will look at me and be like man I could never be a Christian like that guy or honestly they look at me and be like
[00:24:32] I don't want to be a Christian like that guy but they'll look at you or they'll look at you and they go I but I could be a Christian like him I could be a Christian like her God rescued you to
[00:24:41] put you on the rescue team that's what he does with Paul now the reason that we're calling it there is more in game it's I totally ripped it off from uh the Avengers little deal here's why
[00:24:49] I'm doing that. If you've seen the movie Iron Man, you know, if you haven't seen it, that's your fault. I'm about to massive spoiler alert, plug your ears. It's all a deal where Iron Man trades
[00:24:58] his life to kill Thanos. You don't got to watch the movie. I didn't like the movie, but here's what happens from here. The events of Acts 23 set in motion, a chain of events that result in the
[00:25:09] apostle Paul's death. He gets arrested and in Acts 23, he's on trial before a group of dudes called the Jewish Sanhedrin. Sanhedrin. He stays from here to the end of the book of Acts in the Roman
[00:25:20] judicial system. And what you're going to notice is he has multiple chances to get out of the judicial system. He could have gotten out. But I think, and you're going to see it, I think the
[00:25:30] apostle Paul had in his head, he intentionally wanted to stay in the Roman judicial system so that he could, his goal, I think, was to share the gospel with the Roman emperor himself. You're going to see it later in the book. He's going to go, I appeal to Caesar. So he could have got out,
[00:25:47] but he intentionally stays in at the cost of his own life. Here's what I think he was doing.
[00:25:53] You got to be an eighties baby to remember this. What I think he was doing is I think he was going, I'm willing for my life to be the photon torpedo down the vent shaft of the death star.
[00:26:02] Okay. I hear you. That's you could, we could be buddies. I think he was willing to go. If I could trade my life for the gospel to penetrate the heart of the Roman emperor. I'm willing to do
[00:26:14] that because that could lead to the largest empire in the world having the gospel spread through it.
[00:26:19] And oh, by the way, that's exactly what happened. 300 years after the apostle Paul's death, the Roman empire became a Christian empire. I think it all starts with the apostle Paul as the seed that went into the ground that died, that bore much fruit. So anyway, from here to the end
[00:26:34] of the book of Acts, that's what you're going to see. Now, what you got right here is he's on trial before a bunch of dudes called the Jewish Sanhedrin. I don't got time to talk about who that
[00:26:42] is. We go into it on the podcast. Today, what I want to focus on is one verse, one verse and a whole sermon on one word of one verse. So Acts 23, one, he starts saying this, this way says,
[00:26:56] Paul looks straight at the Sanhedrin and said, my brothers, I have fulfilled my duty to God in all good and I want you to say this word out loud okay all good conscience to this day all good
[00:27:07] conscience now let me talk about this is conscience it ends it's the spine of the apostle Paul's entire ministry his conscience what made Paul the dude that he was it was his conscience and here's
[00:27:22] why I want to talk about it especially in like my generation and down we don't talk about the word conscience much anymore. But the Bible talks a whole lot about, a little Bible nerd moment here,
[00:27:33] about a theology of conscience, okay? Now, before we got to talk about it, we got to define it. So I just want you to see this word conscience. What you're going to notice is two words, okay? So con
[00:27:43] is, I think it's a Latin prefix. It means with or within. Science means knowledge. So here's what a conscience is. Your conscience, it's a within knowledge. It's a within knowledge inside of you.
[00:27:57] Now, let me give you a theology.
[00:27:59] Here's what I mean by within knowledge.
[00:28:01] So what the Bible says is there's a courtroom in heaven.
[00:28:03] God is a just judge who the Apostles Creed says he will return to judge the quick and the dead, the living and the dead.
[00:28:09] That God is the one, let God be true in every man a liar.
[00:28:12] God is the only one who rightly judges between right and wrong, truth and error, lies and false, falsehood and truth.
[00:28:21] He's the only one who correctly does it.
[00:28:23] So there's a courtroom in heaven, but check this out.
[00:28:25] The book of Ecclesiastes says, God has put eternity into the hearts of men. So there's an eternal courtroom in heaven that judges right and wrong, but God's put eternity into the hearts of men. So your conscience, it's the inner
[00:28:39] courtroom inside of the chest of every person that is constantly making judges and giving you a sense of feeling of what is right and what is wrong inside of you. Okay. Now, if you, again, for a
[00:28:55] whole bunch of reasons we're going to talk about in a second. We in our culture don't talk a ton about conscience. Let me give you some examples. Your conscience is that thing that like you'll
[00:29:04] get in certain situations and you'll start having this thing kind of go off inside you. It's like a, you might call it guilt. There's a little bit of fear mixed in there, but shame, maybe all that
[00:29:14] stuff. But it's kind of this feeling that you'll get in certain situations where you'd be like, hey man, I don't know what's up, but something's not right here. Something ain't right. Feels off.
[00:29:24] Do I just need to get out of here?
[00:29:26] Something feels a little dirty about all this.
[00:29:28] That's your conscience.
[00:29:29] It's a within knowledge.
[00:29:30] Let me give you another one.
[00:29:31] Sometimes opposite thing.
[00:29:33] Sometimes your conscience will tell you not to do something.
[00:29:36] Sometimes your conscience will tell you to do something.
[00:29:39] So like, here's also what it is.
[00:29:42] It's that moment where like you're in a situation where there's a bunch of pressure to do the wrong thing or you're in a situation where you know you're going to get mocked for being openly on team Jesus you're gonna get mocked for it
[00:29:55] and then you'll start to feel sort of this violent feeling come up within you a thing inside of you that says hey brother stand firm stamp don't flinch when the moment comes if you flinch right
[00:30:09] here if you come off your convictions gonna be hard to sleep tonight stand firm that's your conscience it's within knowledge about right and wrong that is sending senses to you okay within knowledge. Now, let me do this real quick. Three fast facts about your conscience from the Bible.
[00:30:27] A lot of people get this stuff wrong, so let me clear out some things. Three fast facts. Number one, your conscience is not the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit works with your conscience, but the Holy Spirit is not your conscience. The Bible uses different words for the Holy Spirit
[00:30:40] in your conscience. The Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 4, I think, he says, my conscience is clear, but that does not prove that I am innocent. In other words, heads up, I'm going to tip my hat where the sermon's going. Your conscience can be wrong. Your conscience is fallible, but the
[00:30:59] Holy Spirit is infallible. So the Holy Spirit works with your conscience, but it's not your conscience. Fast fact number two, everybody's got a conscience. So only Christians are full of the Holy Spirit and have the Holy Spirit working inside of them. But everybody, lost people,
[00:31:14] save people. Everybody has a conscience. In fact, I'm not going to do the verse heads up booth. I'm not going to do the verse, but if you've ever asked the question before, like, Hey man, so how
[00:31:24] does God judge people who never heard his loss? Doesn't seem fair for God to judge people by laws they never heard. Let me just say, the Bible says you're right. So in Romans two, what the homework
[00:31:38] Romans 2, the Bible says, God will judge people who, quote, die apart from the law.
[00:31:45] He will judge them apart from the law.
[00:31:47] In other words, if they didn't hear those laws, God's not gonna judge them by these laws.
[00:31:51] What he's gonna do, Romans 2 says, he's gonna judge them by their conscience.
[00:31:55] He's gonna go, hey man, you did have an inner sense of right and wrong.
[00:31:58] I'll just judge you by what you knew according to the knowledge you had, your conscience.
[00:32:04] So everybody's got a conscience.
[00:32:06] Lost people save people.
[00:32:07] Number three, this is why this sermon's so important.
[00:32:09] Check this out, man.
[00:32:10] Reject your conscience, wreck your life.
[00:32:14] Reject your conscience, wreck your life, okay?
[00:32:16] Now check this out.
[00:32:17] Verse I'm getting ready to read.
[00:32:19] Timothy is a young pastor at a church named Ephesus.
[00:32:23] And I know this never ever happens to churches.
[00:32:25] The church got a little sideways with Timothy.
[00:32:26] It never happens, okay?
[00:32:27] I know, it's really weird to hear about.
[00:32:29] So Timothy, Paul writes Timothy and he kind of encourages him on some stuff.
[00:32:33] And watch what he says right here.
[00:32:34] Now listen close.
[00:32:36] He says, Timothy, my son, I'm giving you this command in keeping with the prophecies once made about you so that by recalling them, you may fight the battle well, holding on to faith. And here it is a good
[00:32:45] conscience. Watch this. But then he goes, but some reject that conscience, which some have rejected and so have suffered. Now really quick, I'm going to have you say that all caps, yellow word out loud. Here's why I'm doing this. Listen, listen, listen. Some of you right now, you have spent
[00:33:02] years or decades of your life rejecting your conscience. When you do that, the Bible says you are careening. You are sprinting towards ruining your life, your marriage, your family, your lineage, your career. And some of you are on that path right now. And I am praying that the
[00:33:20] Holy Spirit uses the next few minutes to wake you up because God wants to save you from the shipwreck that you're headed towards. So check this out. I want you to say it out loud. Some have rejected
[00:33:32] and so have suffered shipwreck of their faith.
[00:33:35] Check this out.
[00:33:36] This is what the Bible's saying right here.
[00:33:38] You can reject God and the voice of your conscience so much that what once used to be the loud voice of your conscience.
[00:33:50] Here's what happens.
[00:33:52] When you first started sinning the sin that you're sinning, your conscience was real loud, but you kept rejecting it and over time, here's what your conscience did.
[00:34:01] It started like this.
[00:34:02] no no and then you kept sinning and over time your conscience did this no no no no and now

[00:34:18] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_05]
[00:34:18] you can sin that sin and feel nothing and when you are that watch this you're a plane without a warning system and a plane without a warning system is eventually gonna wreck I am praying
[00:34:36] that God wakes up your conscience today

[00:34:40] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_06]
[00:34:40] because he loves you, okay?
[00:34:43] So let me do this.
[00:34:45] Here's only like 4% of you are gonna know what I'm talking about.
[00:34:48] You gotta be at least an 80s baby to remember this.
[00:34:50] There's a little saying, always let your conscience be your guide.
[00:34:53] Only like 4% of you know where that's from.
[00:34:56] So the question is, man, can I trust my conscience?
[00:34:59] Should I always let my conscience be my guide?
[00:35:01] Here's the question.
[00:35:02] Depends what kind of conscience you got.
[00:35:05] Here's what we're gonna do real fast.
[00:35:06] sermon's got to be a little shorter so we can dunk a whole bunch of folks. The Bible talks about four types of consciences, four types of consciences. Here's what I want you to do.
[00:35:16] I'm going to go through them. I'm literally going to pray for you right now. Holy Spirit, would you please be the preacher that I cannot be inside of the chest of men and women? And would
[00:35:25] you please awaken them to the type of conscience they have and bring them to the type of conscience they need because you love them and you don't want them to shipwreck their lives. Amen. I want
[00:35:35] you to ask God while I'm running through these real fast, which one of these describes my conscience? Okay, here we go. Four types. Let's start right here. Number one, there's a good conscience. This is Paul, a good conscience. It's mentioned like eight or nine times in the
[00:35:52] New Testament. I'm going to give you three of them. So number one, you got it right here in Acts 23. Paul looks straight at the Sanhedrin and says, my brothers, I fulfilled my duty to God in
[00:35:59] all good conscience. This next one, 1 Timothy 1.5, the goal of this command is love that comes from a pure heart. And here it is again, you need a good conscience and a sincere faith. And then
[00:36:10] here's another one, 1 Peter 3.21. By the way, we're doing baptism today. This right here is talking about baptism. Now check this out. He goes in this water, he's talking about water baptism, okay?
[00:36:21] This water symbolizes, so here's the deal, a little side sermon. The baptism that people get today, I need everybody to understand this. Baptism doesn't save you. Jesus saves you.
[00:36:34] Baptism symbolizes what actually saves you. So it says this water, it symbolizes baptism that now saves you. Which baptism saves you? What this baptism is, is a visible symbol of the invisible reality that when you place your faith in Jesus Christ, best news you're ever
[00:36:54] going to hear that in that moment, God washes you with the blood of Jesus Christ. He all in that moment, in some way, the cross counts for you. Jesus was punished for your sin. So when God
[00:37:04] looks at you, he doesn't see your sin anymore. He sees the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ, and he separates your transgression from you as far as the East is from the West. Best news you
[00:37:13] ever going to hear. That's what's going on. So the baptism that saves you is when you place your faith in Jesus in the spiritual realm, you're immersed in the death of Jesus Christ and raised
[00:37:25] to new life. That's what this symbolizes. So this is what this is talking about. Symbolizes a baptism that saves you, not the removal of dirt from the body. That's how we know it's not talking
[00:37:36] about water baptism in this verse, but the pledge of a, here it is again, good conscience towards God. Now here's what a good conscience is. You know, you got a good conscience when this happens,
[00:37:48] When you do good, you feel good.
[00:37:49] And when you do bad, you feel bad.
[00:37:51] Sometimes people like in a lobby, they'll sin terrible sins.
[00:37:55] I gotta just give you a heads up, man.
[00:37:56] Every single one of you, almost certainly, you're gonna have a head-on collision with your own depravity at some point in your life.
[00:38:03] So check this out.
[00:38:04] You'll sin a terrible sin.
[00:38:06] And then it's like, there's a certain type of person, like they can't sleep, they can't eat, they can't function.
[00:38:12] It's like, they're just tore up inside.
[00:38:14] And they're like, man, is that a sign something's wrong?
[00:38:17] Listen, listen, listen.
[00:38:17] if when you do bad you feel bad that's not a sign something's wrong it's a sign something's right your conscience is working that's a good thing okay so that's a good conscience another way to
[00:38:28] say it is you know you got a good conscience when you feel what God feels and you care about what God cares about it's an appropriate sensitivity to sin and an appropriate delight in righteousness
[00:38:39] that's a good conscience now let me tell you what a good one thing a good conscience does so you guys know I'm a military history guy this story is supposedly a true story that's recorded
[00:38:50] in United States Navy journals but once upon a time there was a captain of the USS Missouri who his little shipmate came and let him know hey captain we have a serious problem um there's a ship in our sea lane 20 miles away and they refuse to move and so the captain of
[00:39:09] this battleship is like, Hey man, we'll tell him to move. He's like, we did. He said, we'll tell him again. We did. And he goes, and then I'm moving. I go, no, he goes, well, then I'm gonna
[00:39:18] tell him. So the captain himself hops on a radio and a signal goes out. Just very straightforward move starboard 20 degrees at once. And immediately a signal returned back and it said, you move starboard 20 degrees at once. Well, this is like sent the captain. Cause he's like, I'm a captain
[00:39:36] and this is a destroyer. So then he sends a signal back and he goes, Hey man, let me tell you who I am. That's not what he said, but he said, this is captain Horatio Hornblower commanding you
[00:39:47] to move starboard 20 degrees at once. And immediately a signal return. This is seaman Carl Jones commanding you to move star starboard 20 degrees at once. Again, this just like sent the captain to a whole new level. So I'm going to tell them who they're dealing with right here.
[00:40:03] So he hops on and he goes, let me explain who this is.
[00:40:07] This is the USS Missouri.
[00:40:08] We are a BB-63 Iowa-class battleship.
[00:40:12] We are the flagship, okay, I hear you.
[00:40:13] We are the flagship of the Seventh Fleet.
[00:40:15] We are the most decorated vessel in the United States Navy.
[00:40:18] Moved starboard 20 degrees at once, and immediately a signal came back from the other people, and they said, this is a lighthouse, okay?
[00:40:26] Now, check this out.
[00:40:30] Emotional gear shift.
[00:40:32] A good conscience, listen, listen.
[00:40:34] a good conscience it makes you the lighthouse I am moving a good conscience makes you the lighthouse no matter what pressure comes from the world the flesh and the devil you have the ability to stand firm on your convictions because your conscience sends clear signals about what's right
[00:40:53] and wrong and confirms inside of you what you need to stand firm on so your conscience is aligned with your convictions and your convictions are aligned with the king and you're like hey man I don't care if the whole world hates me.
[00:41:06] I need that approval and your approval doesn't matter.
[00:41:08] I can stand firm.
[00:41:10] That's a good conscience.
[00:41:12] This is why, check this out.
[00:41:13] So we said earlier, your conscience was a courtroom.
[00:41:15] In Acts 23, Paul's in a courtroom.
[00:41:18] Do you know why he's able to do what he does?
[00:41:20] He's like, I don't care if you kill me.
[00:41:22] Do you know why?
[00:41:22] He's like, I don't care about this courtroom because this courtroom is good and this courtroom is aligned with that courtroom.
[00:41:29] That is why the Bible says this in the book of Proverbs, The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion.
[00:41:38] Good conscience, okay?
[00:41:40] Number two, second kind of conscience is this.
[00:41:42] Second kind of conscience is a defiled conscience.
[00:41:45] A defiled conscience.
[00:41:46] Let me read it.
[00:41:48] This is Titus 1.15.
[00:41:49] To the pure, all things are pure.
[00:41:51] But to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure.
[00:41:56] Both their minds, here it is, and their consciences are, you say, are what?
[00:42:00] They are.
[00:42:01] Okay, now let me explain something real quick.
[00:42:03] By the way, what I'm getting ready to say, I've said to you before, but you guys don't listen to anything I say and you forgot it if you did.
[00:42:09] So, but also I want you to know this.
[00:42:11] There's a few things, let me pull back the curtain on how I think as a pastor.
[00:42:15] There's a few things that I try to say over and over and over again.
[00:42:19] I am not repeating myself out of laziness.
[00:42:21] I'm repeating myself out of emphasis.
[00:42:24] These are really important concepts.
[00:42:26] So here's what you need to understand.
[00:42:27] Here's a question.
[00:42:27] What's a defiled conscience?
[00:42:28] Well, here's what you gotta understand.
[00:42:29] there is the word and there is the world and the word and the world are in constant conflict with one another and you as a disciple of Jesus Christ you've got to settle in your heart which one
[00:42:43] stands in authority over the other one does the word stand in authority over the world or does the world stand in authority over the word so you got to decide does the word stand in authority
[00:42:54] over the world and judge the world.
[00:42:56] That's good, that's bad, that's right, that's wrong, that's a lie, that's true.
[00:43:01] Or are you the type of person who you don't know you're doing it, but you actually put the world in authority over the word and let the opinions of the world judge the word of God
[00:43:10] and go, well, that's right and that's wrong.
[00:43:13] I like that, I don't like that.
[00:43:14] That's true, that's a lie, that's good, that's bad.
[00:43:19] A defiled conscience, listen, a defiled conscience is somebody that has spent so much time sinning with the world or watch this, surrounded by the world uncritically with no discernment that now their conscience, watch, watch, watch,
[00:43:36] their conscience has been calibrated by the world instead of the word.
[00:43:41] And so it actually is working backwards.
[00:43:44] Your conscience starts to give you good readings on bad things and bad readings on good things.
[00:43:49] That's what the Bible is calling a defiled conscience.
[00:43:51] So here's a big idea.
[00:43:52] Check this out from Hebrews five.
[00:43:53] your conscience has, you got to do something to your conscience because your conscience can be wrong. It says this solid food is for the mature. Those who have their powers of discernment, what's that word? Powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.
[00:44:09] So here's the question. How do you train your, you got to train a conscience. How do you do that?
[00:44:13] Romans 12, two answers that question. Check this out. Don't conform to, it says the pattern of this world. Now let me pause real quick. When it says pattern, the Greek word, it literally means means mold, M-O-U-L-D, mold. So here's my analogy. Have any of you guys, you guys ever poured
[00:44:29] concrete? Who am I kidding, man? This is Rockwall and Heath. Y'all ain't ever poured concrete. At Forney, they get it. At Forney, y'all get it. Yeah, they pour concrete. I've done this just a couple of times in my life. So here, when you pour concrete, the first thing you do is you set the
[00:44:44] mold. You decide what shape you want the patio to be in, whatever it is. So you pour the mold, you set the mold. Then you pour the concrete into the mold and the concrete takes the shape
[00:44:56] of whatever mold you set. What this is saying is it's going, hey man, this world that you're in, it's got a mold and it's trying to pour you into its mold. Its mold is reverse discipling you.
[00:45:11] It's malforming you out of the image and likeness of Jesus Christ and into the image of the lower G God of this world, Satan himself. This world is trying to mold you. Watch this. It's trying to
[00:45:21] like press you down into a mold through everything, through media and entertainment, education systems, the stuff you watch, the people you're around, government system, all this stuff, man.
[00:45:31] It's trying to mold you out of the image of Jesus and into the image of the enemy of Jesus Christ.
[00:45:38] So you got to have powers of discernment trained. So it says, don't be conformed to the mold of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Okay. How are we going to do that?
[00:45:47] Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, his good, pleasing and perfect will. Listen, you've got to train your conscience by immersing it in the word of God and let the
[00:46:02] word be the mold that you pour yourself into. Is that making sense? Now, let me just, let me just gently step into something that, you know, may have a bit of an edge to it, but just step with
[00:46:14] me, man. Listen, I love you. I want good things for your family. Let me talk to parents real quick.
[00:46:18] I'm in it with you, man. I got three. We're at 15, 11, six right now. Changes every year. Hard to remember. Okay. So 15, 11, six. Here's the deal, man. I'm in it with you. So I'm not talking,
[00:46:30] I'm not just talking at you. I'm talking to us. Parents, especially with younger kids, grandparents they're going to need your help to do this if you want to have kids someday parents listen to me one of the most important things you will do is train your children's conscience
[00:46:45] and protect it so that it's aligned to the word of God and not the world that's your job this is one of the most important things you ever do you parents you need to be watching what friends they
[00:46:57] choose it's not just about them having fun the friends they're around they're molding the consciences of your kids so especially when your kids are little hey parents you choose your kids friends ah but you know that they have their own spirit we need to let them be themselves no no
[00:47:16] you're the parent you're the authority over them your job you're the authority you're the god-given authority over them you you if you see your kids hanging out with people and you're like hey man these these friends you're around they celebrate evil things and they're bored and disgusted by
[00:47:33] good things well hey man you need to step in and go man my job is to mold your conscience because if your conscience gets malformed you're going to shipwreck your life and i love you too much for
[00:47:43] that to happen you step in and decide social media man like we don't do that on the howard team we got 15 11 6 i'm not judging you i'm gonna talk about that in a second that's the decision we
[00:47:54] made. We don't do that with our kids. Why? Because if they're spending hours doing this, that's not just entertainment. It's many real sermons, molding consciences. And like 90% of what they're seeing is like pornified, woke, pagan Swifties all the time. I don't care. I don't care. That's what
[00:48:15] they're seeing. And if that's what is, if they grow up on a steady diet of that, that's molding their conscience you got to step in even like movies tv shows they watch can i just let me a
[00:48:27] lot of christian uh parent we're not exercising wisdom in how we decide what media our kids take in from young ages we're not being wise in this so kind of like check this out it's okay if you
[00:48:42] disagree with me on this this is an application let me talk like for instance you know you're like think about your grandpa like your old blue collar grandpa lower up around the edges and he
[00:48:51] you made fun of him because he let the kids watch these old war movies. But then he flipped out when he saw the children's Disney show that had two moms or two dads and you laughed at him. He was
[00:49:05] right. And let's say, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. He was right. Here's why. It's not just about if sin is in a movie or a TV show. The question is, is sin celebrated? Is it normalized?
[00:49:22] So check this out.
[00:49:22] In that old war movie that he let them watch, yeah, there was sin in the movies, but watch this.
[00:49:28] Those movies, it was good versus evil.
[00:49:31] It was clear right versus clear wrong.
[00:49:33] They celebrated values like integrity, self-sacrifice, valor, honor.
[00:49:39] Those things mold consciences.
[00:49:42] And what you can't afford if you got young kids is for them to grow up having evil, shameless, degrading things normalized in their little five, six, seven-year-old conscience.
[00:49:53] It's not just about entertainment.
[00:49:55] It's about molding a conscience.
[00:49:56] Let me just say it, man.
[00:49:57] I'm a dad.
[00:49:57] Let me talk to the dads.
[00:49:58] Dad, dads, go after your kids.
[00:50:01] Fight for your kids.
[00:50:02] Stand up and do something for your kids.
[00:50:03] We are living in the first generation in American history where we got more kids growing up in homes without a dad than with a dad.
[00:50:10] And you wonder why this place is all jacked up.
[00:50:12] Man, you wanna change the world?
[00:50:14] Here's all we gotta do.
[00:50:15] How about every man at Lake Point stand up and act like a man and fight for the hearts of his kids?
[00:50:19] that's going to change everything. So we got to mold them so we don't end up with defiled consciences. Number three, let me do the last ones quick. Number three is a seared conscience, a seared conscience. So check this out. First Timothy four, it says this.
[00:50:35] Now the spirit expressly says in later times, some are going to depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and the teachings of demons through the insincerity of liars. I want you to say the big bolder word out loud,
[00:50:46] whose consciences are seared, okay?
[00:50:50] Now, let me use two analogies to explain what the Bible means here.
[00:50:53] Let me go back to your old crotchety grandpa, the one that grew up swinging a hammer, laying drywall, turning a wrench.
[00:50:59] You remember those big old hands he had?
[00:51:01] You remember that?
[00:51:02] And he had them big old knuckles, looked like little cue balls, okay?
[00:51:07] And you notice he had these big old rough hands.
[00:51:10] Here's how he got those hands, if you didn't know this.
[00:51:11] Here's how he got those hands.
[00:51:12] The first time he went to the construction site and swung a hammer all day, he had blisters all over his hands and then when he went home it hurt and eventually they popped but he kept going back and he swung the hammer again and the longer he did a whole new set of
[00:51:27] blisters popped up the longer he did that eventually he formed you tell me what did he form he formed I got calluses all over his hands the fit the skin was exposed to watch listen watch
[00:51:38] was exposed to so much friction for so long that it got real thick and unfeeling. It didn't feel anymore. It was calloused. Okay. Now, analogy number two, let's talk about searing steaks to glory God in Jesus name for the good of all people. Okay. Pastor Josh, do you love animals?
[00:51:59] Absolutely. Medium rare. Love them. Okay. Here we go. So we're good. Okay. When you sear a steak, here's what you're going to do. You're going to, or unless you do the little reverse sear thing,
[00:52:07] you're going to crank up the grill when you sear it to 500 whatever you can do five six hundred there you go two minutes on each side or 90 seconds on each side however you do it boom boom
[00:52:15] and what it does when you sear a steak is listen close exposure to prolonged high heat sears the skin it makes it tough so nothing can penetrate it anymore and it traps all those juices
[00:52:29] in okay now here's what a seared conscience is when your conscience is exposed to so much sin for so long that it loses feeling and nothing can penetrate it anymore not the love of God
[00:52:47] and not the law of God you can't feel it anymore that's a seared conscience now check this out here's what's interesting in our culture we have a word for a seared conscience but because our culture is not like a Bible culture all the time. We have a therapy word for a seared
[00:53:04] conscience. The therapy word for a seared conscience is sociopath for real. So a sociopath is somebody that can violate morals and harm people and feel nothing. That's a sociopath. Now apparently one to 4% of our population are sociopaths. So that's three to 13 million
[00:53:24] people in America that are sociopaths. Happy Sunday. That's just encourage you. Now, if you think about it, if you put it on the high end, 4%, that's one out of every 25 people that's a
[00:53:36] sociopath. So at all of our campuses, look down a little row you're in and you start, you start counting to 25. If all of them look normal, I'm staying away from you. Okay. That's, that's,
[00:53:49] is a sociopath. Okay. That's a sociopath. Now, listen, man, check this out. I'm pleading with you. You can get a seared conscience and probably at least in one area of your life, there's a sin
[00:54:02] that so easily entangles the Bible says probably at least in one area of your life, you've got a seared conscience. Listen to me. This is why you got to have a band of brothers or a band of sisters
[00:54:11] around you so that when your conscience fails, you actually get to use their conscience and they can watch this. They can call you back when you are prone to wander. Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave
[00:54:24] the God I love. I feel that man. They can call you back when you wander. They can call you up when the worst in you comes out and they can be the person in your life that's like, Hey man,
[00:54:32] that's not who you are. That's not who the spirit of God lives in you. God wants better. He wants you to walk in free. He wants you to live free, man. So you need people who can call you back
[00:54:42] when you wander, call up the best in you. You need that. I'll just tell you how this works in my life.
[00:54:47] you got i've got i've got three groups of people i got a little accountability group i got our elders i got our executive team that i work with constantly i will send them emails usually twice
[00:54:58] a year that'll say something like this hey ma'am if you see anything in my life that's out of alignment with the lord not only do you have permission to say i'm begging you will you please
[00:55:11] tell me i need you to do that or i'll do this i'll reach out to like our elders or our executive team. I'll be like, Hey man, I need you. And don't you pull punches on me. I'll say, I need you to
[00:55:21] tell me three things. What do I need to keep doing? What do I need to, uh, what do I need to start doing? What do I need to keep doing? What do I need to stop doing? I need you to tell me you got
[00:55:30] to, I call it this. You got to deputize some people in your life. When a community deputizes someone, the community says to someone, we're putting a badge on you and giving you permission to if we get out of the law, you do something about it.
[00:55:47] You need people in your life, band of brothers, band of sisters, that you've deputized.
[00:55:52] You're like, hey man, if you see anything in me that's out of alignment with discipleship to Jesus Christ, will you please tell me?
[00:55:59] And listen, why do I do that?
[00:56:01] Because I'm not so dumb that I don't think I'm dumb sometimes.
[00:56:06] And listen, if you don't think you need that, bless your heart, you're too dumb to talk to.
[00:56:10] Listen, I love you, man.
[00:56:11] You need a band of brothers, band of sisters to keep you from ending up with a seared conscience.
[00:56:17] Let me do the last one.
[00:56:18] The last one is, watch this, is a weak conscience.
[00:56:21] They just wanna throw a curve ball at some people, a weak conscience.
[00:56:24] Now, I'm gonna show you 1 Corinthians 8, but I gotta get a little run and start into it or it won't make sense.
[00:56:29] So the Apostle Paul's writing to this little church at Corinth.
[00:56:33] I was actually standing in ancient Corinth last week.
[00:56:36] It was awesome.
[00:56:37] So he's writing to this church at Corinth.
[00:56:38] at Corinth there were these two huge temples to demonic false gods Aphrodite and Apollo okay so all these people at Corinth they had grown up worshiping these demonic false gods and they worship them by sacrificing animals to these demonic false gods but then Paul rolls up in
[00:56:57] starts preaching the gospel spirit falls and a whole bunch of them get saved and now they're on team Jesus they're not worshiping demonic false gods anymore they've bent their knee to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Okay. But then if you notice this, when somebody gets saved out of an
[00:57:13] egregious sin, they usually carry a very heavy sensitivity to that sin. So if you know somebody who got saved out of radical alcoholism, they're usually like really uncomfortable around alcohol.
[00:57:27] Or if you know somebody who got saved out of like extreme promiscuity, they're usually like really uncomfortable around any impurity. The exact same thing happened at Corinth. You had all these dudes that got saved out of demonic false idol worship. And then here's what happened
[00:57:42] in the marketplace at Corinth, 70 to 80% of the meat that was sold there came from animals that was sacrificed to these demonic false gods. So check this out. When I read this, the church
[00:57:54] asks Paul, Hey man, is it okay for us to eat this meat that came from animals that were sacrificed to these demonic false gods.
[00:58:04] Paul, in the verse before what I'm about to read, he just explained, yes, it is okay because those idols are nothing.
[00:58:13] It's literally just a rock or a piece of wood, man.
[00:58:16] So yes, it's okay for you to eat it, but then watch what he says.
[00:58:19] This is really important.
[00:58:21] But not everybody possesses this knowledge that those idols aren't anything.
[00:58:24] Not everybody, what he's saying is not everybody's emotions have caught up to reality yet.
[00:58:29] Okay. Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat sacrificial food, they think of it as having been sacrificed to a little G God. And since their conscience is, you say it, their conscience is weak. It's defiled. Okay. Now here's what a weak conscience is.
[00:58:48] It's when somebody has an overactive conscience. It's a hypersensitive conscience that calls things that aren't wrong, wrong. Their conscience tells them that things the Bible says are not sin.
[00:59:04] Their conscience is oversensitive and goes, but it feels like sin to me. Okay. That's a weak conscience. Now check this out. There are people who bind everybody else's conscience by their own.
[00:59:16] If you ever meet like super judgy, mean Christians, usually, honestly, they're people with a weak conscience. And here's what's going on inside of them. They constantly feel condemned by God.
[00:59:27] And that little condemnation leaks out on everybody else around them. Okay. Here's what it sounds like. Here's what a weak conscience sounds like. It sounds like, it sounds like this. It sounds

[00:59:36] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_05]
[00:59:36] like, Whoa, you went to that movie. I can't believe you went to that. I can't believe you

[00:59:45] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_06]
[00:59:45] went to that movie. And you'd be like, yeah, man, the theater was freezing. I went to that movie.
[00:59:49] Theater was freezing. They're like, well, I hope you enjoyed it. Cause hell's going to be hot.
[00:59:53] you know that's a weak conscience it's a weak conscience a lot of times okay now again what's going on is they feel condemned by God and it leaks out as condemnation of everybody else now
[01:00:03] listen a weak conscience is no joke man a weak conscience if you have this it will ruin your intimacy with God because check this out if you spend your whole life thinking God is angry with
[01:00:13] you disgusted with you and disappointed with you then when you watch this when you sin if you think God's angry, disgusted, disappointed, you're going to run away from God when you sin instead of understanding that now you've been transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of
[01:00:29] light. God's not an angry, he's not a judge for you anymore. He's a loving dad and you're his adopted son or daughter. If you don't understand that and you think God's angry, you'll run away
[01:00:39] from him. So here's what it'll look like. You'll walk into services like this one and you'll want to like lift your hands to adore Jesus Christ in worship, but you'd be going, man, I can't live my
[01:00:50] hands. I lived a sinful week this week. Who am I? I can't do that. Can I just, let me, this is a knot I lived in for a lot of years. Can I untie a knot for you? The Bible says that God has separated
[01:01:05] you from your sin as far as the East is from the West. And it says where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. So wait, wait, wait, wait. If you walk in and you lived a really sinful week this
[01:01:16] week, check this out, where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more, you actually have more reason to worship him because he separated you from your sin as far as the East is from the West.
[01:01:28] Okay. So go at it, man, go at it. Or you'll be like this. You'll be like, you'll want to pray.
[01:01:34] And you're like, man, why even try to pray? He's never going to listen to somebody like me.
[01:01:39] why would God do that? Okay. Now check this out. Here's why this is such a big deal. Okay. Such a big deal. If you, one of the most important questions you will ever answer in your Christian
[01:01:49] life is what, uh, what, how does God feel about you when you sin? That's one of the most important questions you'll ever answer with clarity. How does God feel about you when you sin? If you think
[01:02:04] he's still an angry judge and he's going to like, get back in the doghouse. I'm ticked at you angry, disgusted, disappointed. You'll spend your whole life. I'm a run. And anytime something's off, I'm running away. But check this out, man. If you get the biblical picture, think of story
[01:02:18] of the prodigal son, that the second you wandered off into sin temporarily, the second you wandered off into sin, now God's not a judge anymore. He's your dad that loves you. And the second you
[01:02:30] started wandering off, what he did is he pulled up a little rocking chair on the front porch and he sat down every day that you were wandering off into that sin just scanning the horizon
[01:02:39] waiting for the day that your little mug would pop up back over the top of that hill waiting for you to come home and then the second he sees you what he does is he hops up
[01:02:49] this is bible right here he wraps his little jewish skirt thing around his knees starts running with joy on his face at you and as soon as you get close you start your little lame i'm sorry
[01:03:02] speech. And he's like, shut up. I don't want to hear it. That's literally what happens in that parable. If you pay close attention, I don't want to hear your, I'm sorry, speech. And he runs up to
[01:03:09] you as an adoptive father and he wraps you in his arms, twirls you around. He's like, Hey man, starts yelling to servants, go kill the fattened calf, put the best ring on this one's finger,
[01:03:19] get the best robe. We're throwing a party because this son, this daughter of mine was lost. And now they're found. You welcome home. Welcome home, man. If you listen, man, if you understand that, listen, that that is how God feels about you when you sin. Then no matter what you've done,
[01:03:36] no matter how long you've been doing it, you're going to go, man, I just want to go home to dad because dad can help. Let me go. Let me run home to dad. Dad can help. So you got to get this.
[01:03:46] A.W. Tozer said, the most important thing about you is what you think about when you think about God. The Josh way to say that is that me and Maury Povich have the same job. I tell people
[01:03:56] who the father is. Okay. That's how I like to say it. So let me, if you didn't like that joke, you got a weak conscience, you're going to hate our church. Let me say that. So let me finish
[01:04:07] sermon like this. Okay. Now I've used this illustration before, but number one, you guys don't listen to anything I say. Number two, you forget it. Number three, it's a great illustration.
[01:04:14] You're going to listen. It's really helpful. So I got, um, here, catch my breath. One of my daughters that shall remain nameless, but she's 11. Uh, when she was born, she was born with, um,
[01:04:30] her head the circumference of her head was in the 97th percentile and her body weight was in the third percentile so she looked like a walking candy apple for the first three years of her life okay
[01:04:40] and so when she started trying to learn to uh when she started trying to learn to crawl it was just like lobbing this big old he's doing this thing dragging that big old bowling ball head
[01:04:51] around so then you know there comes a moment you guys remember this you've been parents there comes a moment where um yeah they've been doing this thing and then there comes a moment when i get you know a little more towards one and they start trying to pull up on stuff scares you
[01:05:06] by the way it's i don't know how they do this they never pull up on the side they always pull up on the corner it's gonna nick that little bowling ball head beach ball head i should say
[01:05:15] and it do that and then she started pulling up and when she was doing that because of the size of her head she would pull up and it literally looked like on a string she'd be like you know
[01:05:25] just try to get it up there and then it was like the gravity of it she would just tump back over so the longer she did that eventually her little neck muscles started strengthening and so finally she got to the spot where she'd pull up and then she'd get that little head up
[01:05:40] there and then she'd look at us those big old eyes and then just you know right back down the gravity always wins and then finally after a little while she got those neck muscles good
[01:05:50] enough and there came a day and I got it on video but I'm not going to show it to you there came a day where she pulled up and got those neck muscles up and she looked me at me and Jana and she had
[01:05:59] this little mischievous glint in her eye and she did this. She went and then she fell right back down. Okay. But then she kept pulling up, kept pulling up. And finally she did it. She, she did
[01:06:09] this. There was a day that came where she pulls up and she goes, and then she let go and she looked

[01:06:16] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_05]
[01:06:16] right at me. And then she went and she took her first step. And then she went, you know, just

[01:06:23] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_06]
[01:06:23] like torpedo right to the ground. Now, listen, when I did that, do you know what I didn't say when she fell right down? It's on video. You know what I didn't say? I didn't say loser one step.
[01:06:37] This is our team. We're better than that. I didn't do that. You can hear it on video. What me and Jana are doing is the whole house is erupting. What we're doing is we're cheering. We're going

[01:06:46] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_04]
[01:06:46] like, she's doing it. He's doing it. Trying to get it. She's doing it. She's doing it. She took

[01:06:55] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_06]
[01:06:55] looker first. One imperfect step. And we were roaring. Now, listen, when you became a Christian, God adopted you as his beloved son or daughter. See, this is love. Not that we love God, but that
[01:07:07] he loved us and gave his son as a propitiation for our sins. See what kind of love that the father has loved us with that we are now called children of God. And the second you became a
[01:07:17] Christian, you're his son or daughter. And now what you're doing, check this out. Some of you this year for the first time in your life, you're taking your first tiny little imperfect step.
[01:07:26] started trying to read the Bible for the first time in your life. And you got, you went three days and then you got to a genealogy and Genesis and you're like, I'm out. Okay. And what God's
[01:07:34] doing is he's not going loser three days. He's going, they're doing it. They're doing it. Some of you first time your entire life, you've ever attended church or sit on stairs over there or something like that. You've never attended church for your entire life till 2026. You went five
[01:07:52] weeks and then it rained and you stayed home and what God did is he's not like loser he's going they're doing it your heavenly father's cheering and here's a big one some of you while I've been
[01:08:03] teaching today the Holy Spirit is working in your conscience and you're realizing for the first time in your life that you need to bend your knee to the lordship of Jesus Christ and or you've never
[01:08:16] been baptized publicly to publicly profess your faith in Jesus Christ and tell the world I'm on team Jesus now I want everybody to know I'm on team Jesus now you've never never that's awesome you've never done that before and let me say today's your day seriously we're gonna do man
[01:08:37] at all of our campuses would y'all stand up go ahead and stand up don't start moving don't start moving yet stand up seriously deal here in a second actually if you got a blue shirt on and
[01:08:49] you're registered to get baptized, you go ahead and start moving where you need to move. Everybody else stay with me and look at me, look at me, look at me. Don't look at them. Look at me.
[01:08:57] If you have never been baptized publicly, listen to me, subsequent to your salvation, I'm not talking about being sprinkled as a baby, subsequent to your salvation to publicly profess your faith in Jesus Christ. You need to do that today in obedience to Jesus Christ. Now you may
[01:09:13] be going, yeah, dude, I, but I didn't come dressed for this. Listen, man, we got everything back there we got shirts for you back there oh you don't got my size yeah if they make the size we
[01:09:22] got the size we got bed sheets back there y'all know we got everything yeah man but um you know what about my undergarments like we literally have i'm not joking we got underwear back there
[01:09:32] in your size we got them i didn't bring a towel we got towels okay oh but my hair i think we got hairnets back there if i remember right i think we got them all but you know but the people that
[01:09:43] i came with they're not gonna want to wait for me to go and change and get back they're gonna want to wait. Can I tell you something? If they love you and love Jesus enough to be with you at
[01:09:51] church today, do you know how they're going to respond? Like this. Show them. They're going to respond like this. That's how they're going to respond. They're going to respond like that.
[01:09:59] So man, here's the deal. At all of our campuses, if you are realizing you've never been baptized subsequent to your salvation, you realize you need to do that. Here in a second, when I tell you to
[01:10:09] go, if you're at the Rockwall campus, we got people under the crosses on both sides. At all of our other campuses just walk to the back of the auditorium. We've got people waiting for you.
[01:10:18] We're about to have a big party. That's how we're going to close the service. Big party. Okay. So when I say it, you start moving. Rockwall campus crosses, other campuses back right there.
[01:10:27] So right now, Lake Point family, we're going to sing and we're going to celebrate at the same time.
[01:10:32] You tell me what's the first thing these people should hear when they come up out of the water.
[01:10:35] What's the first thing? That's it. Okay. So right now, if you're realizing you need to be baptized, guys. You start moving right now. Start moving right now. Crosses, backs of campuses. Let's go.

[01:10:45] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_09]
[01:10:45] Here we go. Two things real quick. One, we had like 15 to 20 people just on the spot be like,

[01:19:13] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_06]
[01:19:13] today's my day. So we're going to celebrate with them. They're still, they're still right now.
[01:19:17] We're going to do one more song because they're still getting ready. So we got that. But I will say this 15 to 20 so far, I got feeling there's, there's at least one more. I got feeling at least
[01:19:28] one more. And man, if you're like watching this, you're going like, man, I need to cross the line of faith. Today's your day. And so man, you head right to those crosses. We're ready for you. Let's
[01:19:38] make it happen to, while we're doing this last song, we're going to receive our giving Lake Point family. Listen, everything like this, this is not normal. This is not normal. Everything like this. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your generosity. We could not see this happen without
[01:19:56] you doing what you do. So thank you. You can give one of three ways in the buckets that they come by in the boxes next to doors on your way out, or you can text the word give to the number 20411
[01:20:05] give online. But right now let's keep worshiping, responding, celebrating. Let's go.

[01:26:50] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_01]
[01:26:50] What an amazing service. Hey, before we wrap up our service, let me leave you with one simple invitation, man. If you were here and maybe you need prayer, we would love to pray for you.
[01:26:59] Whether you're joining us from the DFW area or from somewhere else outside of Texas or around the world again you don't want to we don't want you to carry this by yourself we want to be here
[01:27:08] to pray for you so just text the word prayer to 20411 and our team will pray for you this week we know god sees you he cares for you and we do too and so thank you so much again for joining
[01:27:21] us today hey we love you and we will see you next time well hey church online welcome welcome welcome hey it is great to have you here if we haven't met my name is carlos and i serve as pastor of
[01:41:14] digital discipleship and hey you could be watching from somewhere across the globe somewhere in texas or right here in the dfw area you might even perhaps be in your living room or maybe with your kids sitting in a car wherever you are maybe you're tuning in for the first time or you've never
[01:41:30] actually been to any of our campuses no matter where you're watching from you listen to this you are not here by accident hey we believe god sees you knows your story and he's ready to meet
[01:41:41] with you today so do me a favor drop your city state or country in the chat we'd love to say hi and see who is joining us right now and if you found lake point church through live free
[01:41:52] or social media let us know in the chat now some info for all the different parts of our church line community if you're in the dfw area we would love to help you connect that one of our eight
[01:42:02] lake point campuses come visit we'd love to meet you we're not just a service you tune into we're a church you can belong to and it'd be awesome to meet you in person if you are somewhere else
[01:42:13] in texas or maybe another part of the country so glad you're here we hope today's service service encourages you grows your faith and helps you take your next step with jesus and everyone else joining from outside the u.s and i we love that to see how god is working around the world
[01:42:28] we're so thankful with us and we're praying that the service connects you in a real and personal away. Wherever you are, our hosts are chatting right now and our prayer team is ready. If you
[01:42:39] need prayer for anything, just let us know. Drop it in the chat. We are here to serve you. Go ahead, also introduce yourself in the chat. Tell us where you're joining us from and how you found Lake
[01:42:48] Point Church. Pastor Arthur, Sal, and his team cannot wait to say hello. So all over the world,

[01:42:54] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_07]
[01:42:54] let's open our hearts right now. Look to Jesus and worship our God together. Everyone joining

[01:48:48] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_01]
[01:48:48] us online welcome welcome welcome this is baptism weekend and later in today's service we'll celebrate something incredibly powerful a high number of people publicly declaring that jesus has changed their lives hey baptism is an outward expression of an inward transformation or change
[01:49:05] after somebody has met jesus it is a bold step of obedience that shows the world your life is forever changed because of christ and so if you're ready to take that step we would love to help you
[01:49:16] move forward and as we celebrate life change together let this also be a reminder of something deeply important following jesus was never meant to be in isolation hebrews chapter 10 calls us not to neglect gathering together but to encourage one another and spur each other in the faith god
[01:49:35] designed us to grow stronger when we stay connected to his people and so here's what we want you to know church online is such a gift and we're incredibly thankful for it because it allows us
[01:49:45] to reach people across the dfw area throughout texas and literally around the nation and across the globe with the hope of jesus but while online ministry can inspire encourage and sustain you in difficult seasons scott's design is bigger than simply just watching from a distance he created
[01:50:00] us for real discipleship real relationships and real spiritual family lived out in community so here's my encouragement to you wherever you're tuning in from today we want to help you take your next step. And so if you're in or near DFW, we'd absolutely love to welcome you in person at
[01:50:15] one of our Lake Point campuses. Come visit, come hang out, visit lakepoint.church slash locations and find the campus nearest you and come experience biblical community face-to-face in person. And if Lake Point is your church, don't stay distant, come hang out, step in. And now I will say this,
[01:50:33] if you are outside of the DFW area, our heart for you is just as strong. We want to help you find a healthy local church where you can build relationships serve faithfully and grow spiritually
[01:50:45] pastor arthur and our team would love to help guide you towards that next step and so to our international church online family thank you also for being here seeing god move beyond borders is incredible and we're honored to be a part of your faith journey we would love to continue encouraging
[01:51:00] you connecting with you and helping you stay engaged hey one more thing if you haven't yet Let us know where you are watching us right now, where you're joining us from.
[01:51:11] Tell us your city, state, or country.
[01:51:12] We want to reach as many people as we can.
[01:51:15] And then at the same time, we also want to care for you deeply.
[01:51:17] So don't just watch.
[01:51:19] Take one small step today.

[01:51:24] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_03]
[01:51:24] Hey, Lake Point.
[01:51:25] Join us next weekend for Mother's Day on May 9th and 10th as we celebrate the incredible women in our lives.
[01:51:32] Start making plans to bring your mom or mother figure to church for a powerful message and a special gift.
[01:51:38] For details, head to lp.events.
[01:51:42] Students, UnitedXL Hawaiian Night is this Wednesday, May 6th.
[01:51:48] It's going to be an incredible night with worship, inflatables, and free snow cones.
[01:51:54] Doors open at 6.30 at every campus, so bring your friends and find everything you need at lp.events.
[01:52:01] And if you haven't downloaded the Lake Point app yet, now's the time.
[01:52:05] It's the easiest way to stay connected all week with daily Bible reading plans, weekend messages, and the live free podcast all in one place.
[01:52:15] To download it now, just text APP to 20411.
[01:52:20] Now, let's kick off our series, There Is More Endgame.

[01:52:24] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_06]
[01:52:24] All right, man. All right. It's gonna be a good day. About to be a party in here.
[01:52:56] Hey, Lake Point family, we're excited. I'm still sweating from the last service.
[01:53:01] We are at all of our campuses.
[01:53:03] We're getting ready, don't clap yet.
[01:53:04] We're getting ready to baptize.
[01:53:06] I think this weekend we'll end up baptizing like six to 700 people.
[01:53:10] I told you not to, I told you not to.
[01:53:12] So here's what I wanna do, I wanna do it like this.
[01:53:14] You got people around you who are in these little blue t-shirts that they're already ready to be baptized and some of them are real nervous about at your campus or here about being baptized at the end of the service
[01:53:25] and walking up.
[01:53:26] So hey, Lake Point family, can we go ahead and preemptively show them how proud we are of everybody going public for Team Jesus. Here we go, man. Amen. It's going to be awesome. It's going to be awesome. It's going to be great. Okay. I got to get right at it. Let
[01:53:39] me, we are starting, we're actually, we are starting a series that we're finishing. We are like 30 to five to 40 weeks into preaching through the book of Acts, verse by verse, chapter by chapter. We are calling from here to the end of the series. We're going to go from here, chapter
[01:53:55] by chapter, leading all the way into the summer up towards how the movies to finish the book of Acts. The entire series has been called. There is more. We're, we're calling this installment of the series. There is more colon end game. And I totally got it from the Avengers movie. I'm
[01:54:09] going to explain that here in a second. So let me lead into the sermon that I'm about to preach like this. I've never preached a sermon on this thing before. So let me lead into it like this.
[01:54:19] There was a guy that went to confession with his priest and he explained to the priest that he'd been stealing lumber from the lumber yard that he worked at for years. And so the priest just said,
[01:54:30] well, how much lumber did you take? And he said, well, father, I took enough, um, to do my own home, a house for my son, a house for each of my two daughters and a vacation home at the lake.
[01:54:43] And, uh, somebody just cheered for that. You need this sermon. Now that's the sermons for you.
[01:54:48] Um, and the father, you know, priest thought for a minute and he said, man, this is very serious.
[01:54:53] I'm going to think of a, I'm going to need to think of a big penance for you to do. And then he said, have you ever done a prayer retreat? And the man thought for a minute and he said,
[01:55:02] no father, but if you give me the plans, I know where to get the lumber. Okay. Now let me, um, that's a stupid joke, but, uh, today, what I want to do is talk to you, um, about what can happen
[01:55:14] to you when you sin so much that you can't feel it anymore. Um, what we're doing today is, um, like I said, we're in Acts chapter 23. Let me get a run and start into it. Okay. So here's what's
[01:55:27] going on. From here to the end of the book of Acts, it's all going to revolve around a dude named Paul. If you weren't here for the other parts of this series, the apostle Paul starts
[01:55:36] the book of Acts as a religious terrorist. Like I'm not joking at all. This is not an exaggeration.
[01:55:40] Think ISIS. He starts as a religious terrorist, killing people for being Christians. And then God saves him in Acts 9. He starts his first missionary journey in Acts 14. And then he ends his life. You're going to see it. We'll point up to it. He ends his life being beheaded in Rome
[01:55:58] for being a Christian. So think about this. He starts as the dude killing Christians. He ends his life being killed, preaching Christ as a Christian. So let me just say this. If your buddy dragged you here because he's getting baptized today, and right now you're totally out on this
[01:56:12] team Jesus stuff, and you're like, oh, this is real dumb, and I hate it. What I want to say to you is watch out, man. This thing will get on you because God can use anybody. So this is what
[01:56:20] happened to the apostle Paul. Now check this out. Here's the other thing. God saves him in Acts 9.
[01:56:25] He starts his first missionary journey in Acts 14. So here's a big idea. As soon as God rescues him, he puts him on the rescue team. That's what God does for you. As soon as Jesus rescues you,
[01:56:36] you're on the rescue team to help save one more. So here's a point, man. If some of you look at a guy like me and you're like, man, I could never be a Christian like that guy. Listen, listen,
[01:56:46] listen that's not your disadvantage that's your advantage because a lot of people would look at somebody like me and they're like I could never be a Christian like that or more likely I don't want to be a Christian like that but they'll look at you and they'll go but I could be a Christian
[01:56:59] like him or I could be a Christian like her that's your advantage so then the reason that we're calling this uh there is more end game okay again I totally got it from the Avengers movie this is
[01:57:10] a spoiler alert if you haven't seen it that's on you you had a lot of years because what happens is an iron man trades his life to take down Thanos. Spoiler alert. So here's what happens.
[01:57:21] The events that we are going to read about today in Acts 23 set in motion a chain of events. This is the chain of events that are going to lead to the apostle Paul's death. He's going to trade his
[01:57:32] life for something. Now check this out. He's on trial in Acts 23 before this group of guys called the Jewish Sanhedrin. I don't got time to talk about who they are. We go into it in the
[01:57:43] podcast, but he's before the Jewish Sanhedrin. What you will notice, I'll point it out in the next few weeks. Paul has multiple chances where he could have gotten out of the Roman judicial system and lived a safe, free, best life now, but he doesn't do it. There's something that matters
[01:58:02] more to Paul than his life. In fact, the apostle Paul had a life verse. It's Acts 20, 24. If I ever show up on stage and I got a tattoo, it's going to be one of two things. You're going to be big
[01:58:11] to Telestai or it's going to be Acts 20, 24. I was going to get this verse as a tattoo, but Janice said my body's already perfect. So I didn't. Okay. So that's a joke. Acts 20, 24 is Paul's life
[01:58:22] verse. He says in Acts 20, 24, however, I consider my life worth nothing to me. If only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me, the task of testifying to the gospel of
[01:58:33] God's grace. So the apostle Paul goes, man, I could have gotten out of the judicial system, but there's something I want more than that and I think, I'm gonna show it to you in the next few weeks,
[01:58:44] I think Paul's strategy was, you gotta be at least an 80s baby to get this.
[01:58:50] For you Star Wars folks, I think Paul's strategy is he was like, I want my life to be the photon torpedo down the vent shaft of the Death Star of the Roman Empire.
[01:58:59] I for real think that was his strategy.
[01:59:01] I think he was going, man, if I can trade my life, you're gonna notice, I think his goal was to share the gospel directly with the Roman emperor.
[01:59:10] You'll see it later in Acts.
[01:59:11] He goes, I appeal to Caesar.
[01:59:14] And I think he was going, if I can trade my life for the emperor of Rome, bending his knee to Jesus Christ, that could set off the kingdom of God rushing through the gospel, rushing through the Roman empire
[01:59:26] in a way that overtakes the world.
[01:59:27] And actually, just fast forward, that's exactly what happens.
[01:59:31] 300 years after the apostle Paul's death, the Roman empire that once was like this demonic, pagan, terrible thing. Christianity is declared the official religion of the Roman empire 300 years after Paul. Now check this out. This is amazing. What you're going to see right here
[01:59:47] is Paul starting these chain of events here in Acts 23. I'm going to read one verse and this whole sermon is on one word of one verse. Okay. So he stands in front of the Jewish Sanhedrin.
[02:00:00] He says this, Paul looked straight at the Sanhedrin and said, my brothers, I have fulfilled my duty to God in all good and I want you to say this yellow word out loud all good conscience to
[02:00:12] this day conscience now let me let me talk to you about this Paul's conscience we don't talk about conscience especially in my generation and down we don't talk about conscience but the bible bible nerd moment here there's a huge theology of what of conscience in the bible Paul's conscience was
[02:00:32] the spine of his ministry, conscience. So let me, let me explain it before we start talking about it. Here's what conscience is. I want you to notice conscience is actually two words, compound word. Con I think is a Latin prefix. It means with or within, and then science means knowledge. So
[02:00:50] what's a conscience? Conscience is a within knowledge. It's a knowledge that you have within of right and wrong. Now let me, let me put a little theology on that. Okay. What the Bible says is that there's a courtroom in heaven
[02:01:03] and that God is the only just judge.
[02:01:06] The Apostles' Creed says that from thence he shall return to judge the quick and the dead.
[02:01:10] That God is the only just judge of the universe.
[02:01:13] Let God be true and every man a liar.
[02:01:15] It does not matter what the world says is right and wrong.
[02:01:17] The only thing that matters is that God, the sovereign judge of the universe, he will judge correctly between right and wrong, truth and lies, evil and good.
[02:01:25] Only God can do that.
[02:01:27] So there's a courtroom in eternity in heaven, but check this out.
[02:01:30] The book of Ecclesiastes says God has put eternity into the hearts of man.
[02:01:35] So there's a courtroom in eternity, but God's put eternity into the hearts of man.
[02:01:41] Your conscience is the inner courtroom that God has built into your heart that is constantly making judgments inside of you and giving you a sense, a feeling of what's right and what's wrong.
[02:01:55] Okay, now if that makes sense, let me give you some examples because we don't talk about this a lot in our culture.
[02:02:00] your conscience is that thing where like you'll get in a certain situation and you'll just start having this it's like almost like an anxiety something in you and you'll just be like hey dude I don't know what's going on something's off man something don't feel right something's off I need
[02:02:15] to get out of here something feels a little dirty about all this that's your conscience I'll give you another one sometimes your conscience will tell you what not to do sometimes it'll tell you to do something so like have you ever been in a situation where there's
[02:02:29] all this pressure around you to do the wrong thing or you know you're going to get mocked for being openly on team Jesus and you realize that and the moment comes and there's like this
[02:02:42] violent thing that starts welling up inside of you that starts saying to you hey man you stand firm stand firm you stand on your conviction don't flinch when the moment comes because if you come
[02:02:54] off your convictions gonna be hard to sleep tonight how you gonna live with yourself that's your conscience it's a within knowledge about what's right and what's wrong okay now let me do this three fast facts about your conscience okay we're a whole theology this thing three fast facts
[02:03:11] number one your conscience is different from the holy spirit so the holy spirit works with your conscience and in your conscience but your holy but the holy spirit is not your conscience the bible uses two different words for conscience and holy spirit and in first corinthians four
[02:03:25] the apostle says um uh my conscience is clean but that does not make me innocent in other words i'm gonna talk about this here in a second heads up your conscience can be wrong your conscience is
[02:03:40] fallible but the holy spirit is infallible the holy spirit's not your conscience fast fact number two everybody's got a conscience only christians have the holy spirit but everybody's got a conscience so don't i'm not hey booth i'm not doing a verse i'm just going to explain it so
[02:03:54] if you've ever asked the question before hey man when God judges the world how's he going to judge people who never heard his his word it's not fair for him to judge people by laws they weren't even
[02:04:06] aware of Romans chapter 2 there's your homework answers that question because what Paul says is he says that everyone not everybody has God's law and what he says is people who perish apart from the law will be judged apart from the law what he's saying is if somebody dies and they never
[02:04:23] never heard about God's law. God's not going to judge them by his law. Well, then what's he going to judge them by? Romans two says he will judge them according to their conscience. They at least
[02:04:35] had an inner sense of what was right and wrong, and he'll judge them according to the knowledge they have. But here's the big idea. That means everybody's got a conscience. Lost people save people. Everybody's got a conscience. Fast fact number three. This is why this sermon is so
[02:04:47] important. Reject your conscience, wreck your life. Reject your conscience, wreck your life.
[02:04:53] Now, check this out.
[02:04:53] I'm gonna read a verse from the book of 1 Timothy.
[02:04:57] Paul's writing to a young pastor at a place named Ephesus, and the church started getting a little sideways with him, so Paul wrote this little letter to him, and here's what he said.
[02:05:04] He said, Timothy, my son, I've given you this command in keeping with the prophecies once made about you so that by recalling them, you may fight the battle well, holding onto faith, and here it is, a good conscience,
[02:05:15] watch this, which some have rejected and so have suffered.
[02:05:19] Now, I'm not gonna say it yet.
[02:05:20] In a second, I want you to say the big all caps yellow word out loud now check this out here's why I'm doing this this is an urgency for me some of you are doing or have been doing what this verse says and you have rejected
[02:05:33] your conscience for so long that you are sprinting towards wrecking your life your marriage your family your legacy your lineage your job your reputation you're sprinting towards a shipwreck And listen, I'm praying that the Holy Spirit
[02:05:49] would wake you up and pull you out of that and save you from that today because God loves you.
[02:05:55] So this is what I'm praying.
[02:05:56] Now check this out.
[02:05:57] Here's what he says.
[02:05:58] Some have rejected it and so have suffered.
[02:06:00] What have suffered?
[02:06:02] Shipwreck in regard to the faith.
[02:06:04] Here's the big point.
[02:06:05] You can reject God and reject the voice of your conscience so long when you sin that what once used to be the loud voice of your conscience the longer you reject it the quieter it gets so check this out when you first
[02:06:24] started doing the sin that you're trapped in right now your conscience was loud it said no but you rejected it watch you rejected it and the longer you rejected it it did this it started
[02:06:38] going no and then you kept going and went no no no no and now you can sin and feel nothing

[02:06:55] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_05]
[02:06:55] watch this watch this when that happens you're a plane without a warning system and a plane without a warning system is eventually going to crash he says reject it it will shipwreck

[02:07:11] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_06]
[02:07:11] your faith okay now here's a question okay only like four percent of you're going to get this because you got to be at least an 80s baby to know what this is from uh there's that little
[02:07:21] phrase always let your conscience be your guide only like four percent of you know what that's from uh the question is should you always let your conscience be your guide can you trust your conscience well here's the deal depends what kind of conscience you have depends what kind of
[02:07:37] conscience you have so here's we're gonna do i got sermon's gonna be a little shorter because we got to dunk a whole bunch of folks. I'm going to run through real quick, four types of consciences
[02:07:45] that the Bible has, talks about. I'm going to do them real quick. Okay. Number one, first, there's a good conscience. We just read it. This is mentioned eight or nine times in the New Testament. I'm going to give you three of them. So we just read this one up here, Acts 23,
[02:07:57] one, my brothers, I have fulfilled my duty to God in all good conscience. There it is.
[02:08:02] Here's another one. First Timothy 1.5. The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Here's one. This actually, this verse is talking about baptism. We're going to do at the end of the service. Now check this out. He says in first
[02:08:18] Peter and this water, watch this symbolizes, watch this. I need to get this out. The water we're baptizing people in, in this service, the water doesn't save anyone. It symbolizes him who saves people. So baptism does not save you. A savior saves people. So this is going, this water that
[02:08:40] you're going to be baptized in, it symbolizes baptism. It's saying the water baptism symbolizes a different type of baptism. What type of baptism? When you place your faith in Jesus Christ, God immerses you in the death of Jesus Christ. He raises you to new life. You are immersed in the
[02:08:57] blood of Jesus. You are what the Bible says, cleanse me with his, but I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be water than snow. You are immersed in the blood of Jesus Christ. It's the
[02:09:07] perfect sin solvent. It removes every stain of sin from your life. And the second you place your faith in Jesus Christ, you're transferred from the domain of darkness, darkness to the kingdom of light. You're transferred from death to life. And God removes your sins from you. As far as the East
[02:09:22] is from the West, best news you've ever heard. Okay. That's the best that you being immersed in Jesus Christ is the baptism that the water baptism symbolizes that now saves you. The spiritual baptism is the one that saves you, not the removal of dirt from the body. That's how we
[02:09:37] know it's not talking about water baptism, but the pledge of a, here it is again, good conscience towards God. Okay. Now here's what a good conscience is. A good conscience is when, when you do good
[02:09:48] things, you feel good. And when you do bad things, you feel bad. Okay. So this is important. Sometimes people will sin a terrible sin. Let me give you a heads up, man. Almost all of you are going to
[02:09:59] have a head-on collision with your own depravity at some point in your life. Okay. You're going to sin a terrible sin. Some people, when they do that, they're tore up for a long time. It's like,
[02:10:11] they can't sleep. They can't eat. It's like, I can't believe it. It's like, they're real messed up when they sin. And they'll go, hey man, does that mean something's wrong with me? Actually, that feeling of feeling bad when you do something bad, that doesn't mean something's wrong. It means
[02:10:26] something's right. It means your conscience is working. That's a good conscience. Here's another way to say it. A good conscience is when you see what God sees and feel what God feels and care about what God cares about. It's an appropriate sensitivity to sin and an appropriate delight
[02:10:42] in righteousness. Now, let me tell you one thing that a good conscience does. It's going to explain everything about Paul. So you guys know military history, guys. This is apparently a true story from the United States Navy that's recorded in a U.S. Navy journal. So apparently once upon a time,
[02:11:01] there was a captain of the USS Missouri that his little shipmate came and explained, hey, captain, we have a serious problem. There's another ship in our sea lane 20 miles away, and they refuse to
[02:11:14] move and so the captain is like we'll tell him to move he goes like we have that sends the captain so he's like well I'm gonna tell him myself so the captain hops on the radio and then he says
[02:11:25] just issues a command move starboard 20 degrees at once and a signal immediately returned you move starboard 20 degrees at once well the captain is like again he gets sent and so he's like he's like
[02:11:40] I'm gonna explain who I am hops back on the radio and he says this is captain Horatio Hornblower commanding you to move starboard 20 degrees at once and immediately a signal comes back and he
[02:11:51] goes well this is seaman carl jones and i command you to turn starboard 20 degrees at once well the captain's like i'm a captain he's like what is he doing so the captain he kind of bows up and he
[02:12:03] hops back on and he says i repeat this is captain horatio hornblower captain of the uss missouri this is a bb63 iowa class battleship we are the flagship of the seventh fleet we are the most
[02:12:14] decorated vessel of the United States Navy. Moved starboard 20 degrees at once. Immediately signal came back and the guy says, this is a lighthouse. Does that make sense? The other guy. Okay. Now here's the point. Having a good conscience, listen, having a good conscience, it makes you the
[02:12:33] lighthouse. I ain't moving. No matter what pressure comes from the world, the flesh and the devil, you are able to stand firm on your convictions because on the inside you have a conscience that confirms your convictions
[02:12:48] and you know that your convictions are in alignment with the king and so it doesn't matter if everybody else is against you if God before you it doesn't matter who's against you greater is he that is in me than he that is in the world
[02:12:59] your conscience does that a good conscience gives you a strong inner sense of like hey man I'm standing firm I'm standing firm I know what I believe this is why by the way in Acts 23 Paul's in a courtroom and he's like I don't care what this
[02:13:15] court says because there's a courtroom in here that confirms that what I'm doing is right and this courtroom is aligned with that courtroom so this courtroom doesn't matter that's why by the way the Bible says in the book of Proverbs the wicked flee when no one pursues but the righteous
[02:13:31] are as bold as a lion it's a good conscience does this this is what the apostle Paul has all right Number two, number two, second type of conscience is a defiled conscience, a defiled conscience.
[02:13:44] Let me read it.
[02:13:45] This is Titus 1.15.
[02:13:47] To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure, but both their minds and their consciences are, you say it, are defiled.
[02:13:58] Okay, now check this out.
[02:13:59] I've said this before, but y'all don't listen to anything I say and you forget it if you do and I would need to say it again.
[02:14:04] So by the way, let me just pull back the curtain on something real quick. There's a few little concepts that I try to repeat. I'm not repeating myself out of laziness. I'm repeating for emphasis. These concepts, like they're anchor
[02:14:18] concepts. So check this out. Here's one of them. You need to understand as a disciple that there is the word and there is the world and the word and the world are in constant conflict with one
[02:14:31] another, and you have a decision to make, which one stands in authority over and judges the other one? Does the word stand in authority over the world and judge it? That's right. That's wrong.
[02:14:46] That's good. That's evil. That's true. That's a lie. Word over world. Or for some of you, you don't even know you're doing this. I'm going to talk about this here in a second, but you have emotionally
[02:14:57] calibrated yourself where actually for you the word stands in the world stands in authority over the word and you're letting the world judge the word and go that's true that's false that's a lie that's not that's good that's evil I like that I don't like that you've got to decide as a disciple
[02:15:18] of Jesus Christ that the word stands in authority over the world and judges it you've got to make that decision now check this out so what's a defiled conscience what's a defiled conscience a defiled conscience is when you sin so much and rationalize it or when you spend so much time
[02:15:39] listen without discernment maturity and discernment around the world that you begin to imbibe the value systems emotional calibrations of the world watch this and your conscience becomes calibrated to the judgments of the world instead of the word
[02:15:57] and your conscience begins to give you bad readings.
[02:16:01] Your conscience actually begins to give you bad readings when you do good things and good readings when you do bad things.
[02:16:06] That's a defiled conscience, okay?
[02:16:09] Let me show you this.
[02:16:10] Here's a big idea.
[02:16:11] This is Hebrews 5.
[02:16:12] It says, solid food is for the mature.
[02:16:14] For those who have their powers of discernment, what's that big word right there?
[02:16:17] Have their discernment.
[02:16:19] You got to train your conscience.
[02:16:22] Your conscience can be wrong.
[02:16:23] You've got to train it.
[02:16:25] Their discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil, okay?
[02:16:29] So how do you train it?
[02:16:31] Well, the Bible answers that in Romans 12.
[02:16:33] Check this out.
[02:16:34] Don't conform to the pattern of this world.
[02:16:36] Now check this out.
[02:16:37] When it says pattern, the Greek word is literally mold, M-O-U-L-D, mold.
[02:16:42] So here's the analogy I like to use, okay?
[02:16:45] Any of y'all ever pour concrete?
[02:16:47] Who am I?
[02:16:48] My joke, this is Rockwall and Heath.
[02:16:49] Y'all ain't pouring concrete.
[02:16:50] Forney gets it.
[02:16:51] Forney Campus gets it.
[02:16:52] They pour concrete over at Forney.
[02:16:54] I've only done this a couple of times in my life, but when you pour concrete, what you do, the first thing you do is you set the mold. So, hey, what shape do I want the patio to be in?
[02:17:04] You set the mold first, then you pour the concrete and watch the concrete takes the shape, whatever shape you set the mold in, it becomes that. What this verse is saying is that this world
[02:17:18] has a mold, M-O-U-L-D, and this world is trying to malform you out of the image of Jesus.
[02:17:26] This world is constantly trying to do reverse discipleship to get you not to look like Jesus, but to mold you into the image of the little g, God of this world. The Bible says that Satan is
[02:17:37] the God of this world. He controls the world systems, the Bible says. And it's constantly exerting pressure on you. You're like clay and it's trying to press you down into the image of the little G God of this world, Satan, through tons of things, through entertainment, the media
[02:17:53] you take in, education systems, government systems, all these things. It's trying to mold you out of the image of Jesus into the image of Satan, the lower G God of this world. Romans 12 is saying,
[02:18:05] don't let it do that. Okay. How do we not let it do that? Instead, be transformed by the renewing of your mind. You got to fill your mind with the word of God. Renewing of your mind. Then you will
[02:18:17] be able to test and approve what God's will is, his good, pleasing, and perfect will. So how do we train our conscience? We immerse ourselves in the word of God. Now, let me just say something
[02:18:27] real quick to parents. And let me just step into something. It may be a little uncomfortable, but just a bit of an edge to it. I love you. Let me just say this. I'm with you. Hey, dude,
[02:18:39] I'm with you I'm a dad I got three right now we're at 15 it's 15 11 6 changes every year hard to remember 15 11 6 so here's I'm gonna get with you so I'm not talking at you I'm talking with
[02:18:51] you I'm with you here parents especially of young kids grandparents that they're gonna need your help or if you someday are gonna have young kids you need this parents listen you're one of the most important things you will do as a Christian parent is you carefully shape the consciences of
[02:19:09] your children and you pay very close attention to anything that might mal-shape the consciences of your children and you do not let that happen. That's your job. So think about this. It's like you're paying attention parents. What friends do my kids have? Because those friends, they're not
[02:19:27] just friends, they're shaping consciences. If you start seeing like, man, my kid is hanging out with a bunch of kids who they celebrate evil things and they move away from good and holy things, your job as a parent is to step in especially when your kid's younger and go I'm choosing your
[02:19:43] friends and it's not them oh you're like oh man but they're a snowflake and a skittle and they need to be themselves okay no they're a wretched black-hearted foolish sinner that's what the Bible says and you need to be the one listen you're not their friend you're their parent you're their
[02:20:00] authority God given authority why listen why did God give you that authority why did God give you that authority so that you could stand in between Satan and your kids and fight for your family and
[02:20:11] say, nope, can't have them. That's why God put them under your authority. The social media they spend time on. I'm just telling you, man, on our team right now, again, 15, 11, six, we don't do
[02:20:20] social media with the kids. I'm not judging you. I'm going to talk about that in a second. That's a decision we have made. But listen, I'm just saying, man, if your kids are spending hours and
[02:20:28] hours on this thing, that's not just entertainment and it's definitely not just social. It's shaping the consciences of your kids and what it's doing is this the little g god of this world is defiling
[02:20:40] the conscience of your kid you got to step in and be aware of that stuff and i'm just gonna tell you man like not i'm just gonna say like 90 of like what they're flipping right there it's like
[02:20:52] pornified woke pagan swifties i don't care i said it that's like 90 of what so you've got to like you got to be able to step in and go man that's not for us let me just do one last one man a lot
[02:21:05] of christian parents i'm in it with you is we are not exercising wise discernment in the media entertainment movies and shows especially that our younger kids whose consciences are like very wet concrete we're not exercising discernment in what they inundate themselves with so let me just let
[02:21:26] me explain something real quick here's how me and janna think about it i'm not saying you got to this is how we think about it. I'm thinking through the lens, how does this shape my kid's
[02:21:35] conscience when I'm evaluating a show? So let me just think about your, I'm going to do a little thing here. Think about your old crotchety grandpa that he would let his kids watch these old war
[02:21:49] movies, but then, and you mocked him for this. You mocked him for this. He let his kids watch these old war movies, but then he flipped out when there was a little Disney show that had two dads
[02:22:01] or two moms. And you mocked him for it. Can I say something? He was right. Because watch this, man.
[02:22:08] It's not about whether there are evil things. Now there are some things, obviously we set our eyes on these not evil things. There are some things we don't do, but check this out. It's not about
[02:22:18] if there's evil things in what they're watching. It's about is evil celebrated and normalized in what they're watching because that's calibrating their conscience to something. And those old war movies, check this out. There were evil things in those movies, but it was obvious to the viewer.
[02:22:33] This is good versus evil. This is right versus wrong. And they celebrated values like self sacrifice, valor, honor, integrity, honorability. They celebrated those things that calibrates the conscience. So listen, and I'm one, listen, man, I'm in it with you. I'm in it with you. This is
[02:22:51] not me at you. It's me with you. Dads, we got to show up for our kids. Fight for your kids. Go after your kids. This is the first generation in American history. Listen, first generation in
[02:23:02] American history where more kids are growing up without a dad in the home than with a dad in the home. And you wonder why this place is so jacked up. Listen, man, you want to change the world.
[02:23:11] Here's all you got to do. How about every man at Lake Point stand up and act like a man and go after the hearts of his kids and fight for his family. That's going to change everything. So we
[02:23:19] got to step in between. Okay. I got to do the others faster. Here we go. Last two. Number three is a seared conscience. The Bible talks about a seared conscience. First Timothy 4.1. It says,
[02:23:31] now the spirit expressly says that in later times, some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and the teachings of demons through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are, and I want you to say it, whose consciences are seared. Now here's two analogies
[02:23:45] for what the Bible means by seared conscience. Let's go back to your, let's go back to your old blue collar, crotchety grandpa. You remember his hands? He had those big old gnarly hands.
[02:23:55] His little knuckles look like cue balls. And they're real thick. They're real thick and rough.
[02:24:00] Here's how he got those thick, rough hands. He grew up, he grew up swinging a hammer, turning a wrench, hanging drywall. Here's how he got those hands. The first time he went to the site and he swung a hammer, he got all these blisters on his hands and it hurt. But then he
[02:24:14] kept going back and those blisters pop and a new layer of skin developed that was tougher than the last layer of skin but then he got blisters again and the same thing happened and he kept going back
[02:24:24] and watch it watch watch watch as he was exposed to that constant friction for many years he what did he develop on his hands he developed calluses thick thick listen unfeeling thick unfeeling skin so that he could be exposed to extreme friction
[02:24:46] and not feel it, no pain.
[02:24:48] Now, let me give you another analogy.
[02:24:50] Let's talk about searing a steak to the glory of God and the good of people.
[02:24:52] Let's talk about searing a steak.
[02:24:54] Pastor Josh, do you like animals?
[02:24:56] Absolutely, medium rare, love them.
[02:24:57] Okay, they're so lovely.
[02:24:58] Here's the thing.
[02:25:01] Okay, if you ever seared a steak, what you're gonna do is when you sear it, you're gonna crank that grill up to 500 or as high as it's gonna go, five, 600, two minutes on each side, 97, whatever it is, boom, boom.
[02:25:11] What it does is when you sear a steak, it it sears that little outer layer of skin on the steak and it makes it it kind of seals it off it makes it unfeeling makes it real tough so that nothing can penetrate it and it traps all those
[02:25:27] juices inside which is awesome glory to god it traps all those juices inside so that nothing can penetrate the steak here's what a seared conscience is when your conscience is exposed to so much sin for so long that it loses feeling and nothing can penetrate it anymore. Not the love
[02:25:48] of God, not the law of God, nothing. That's a seared conscience. Seared conscience. Okay, let me hang on.
[02:25:56] This is, listen, listen, listen. This right here, this is why you need a band of brothers or a band of sisters in your life. Because everybody, listen to me, everybody, you've got one area of your life
[02:26:08] at least where your conscience is seared because you normalize that sin, whatever it is.
[02:26:13] That's why you need a band of brothers or a band of sisters, watch, who can call you up to what God has called you to be, can call you back when you're prone to wander,
[02:26:23] Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.
[02:26:25] You need some people who like in your blind spots, they can step in and go, hey man, that's not who you are.
[02:26:30] That's not, you're a son of the living God, man.
[02:26:33] That ain't who you are.
[02:26:34] Let's get back on a path, man.
[02:26:36] And actually I'll pick you up, put you on my back and carry you back to Jesus.
[02:26:39] Can I help you?
[02:26:40] You need a band of brothers or a band of sisters.
[02:26:42] I'm just gonna tell you what I do.
[02:26:43] I've got three groups of people.
[02:26:45] I got a group of pastors that are like accountability group for me.
[02:26:48] They're like, we're tight.
[02:26:49] They know everything about my life.
[02:26:50] Our elders, some guys on our executive team, but usually twice a year, I will reach out to a big group of people and I'll just tell them, hey man, if there is anything in my life that you see
[02:27:02] that's out of line, that's out of step with my call, I need you to tell me.
[02:27:06] Watch, I'm not just giving them permission, I'm asking them to do it.
[02:27:12] I say, man, you tell me.
[02:27:13] I call this deputizing somebody in my life.
[02:27:16] When a city deputizes someone, the city goes, we're putting a badge on you and if you see any of us breaking the law, we're giving you the responsibility to come and do something about it.
[02:27:29] You need to deputize some people in your life and go, hey man, if something's off, I need you to tell me that's your job, okay?
[02:27:36] Now listen, man, Josh, why do you do that?
[02:27:38] Because I'm not so dumb that I don't think I'm dumb sometimes.
[02:27:43] And if you don't think you need that, bless your heart, you're too dumb to talk to probably.
[02:27:47] Okay, you need that.
[02:27:48] I love you, I love you.
[02:27:50] But if you don't think you need that, you don't understand reality.
[02:27:53] This is a seared conscience is what this is.
[02:27:56] Okay, now let's go to the last one.
[02:27:57] The last type of conscience is a weak conscience.
[02:28:01] A weak conscience.
[02:28:02] Now go ahead and put up that 1 Corinthians 8 verse.
[02:28:03] This is another one.
[02:28:04] Let me get a running start into it.
[02:28:06] So there's this going on right here.
[02:28:07] it's not going to make sense. So Paul is writing this little letter to this group of this church at Corinth. I was actually just standing in ancient Corinth with a group of Lake Pointers last week. It was awesome. So he's writing this church at Corinth. At Corinth, there were these
[02:28:19] two massive temples to these demonic false gods. One was Aphrodite and everybody in Corinth, they grew up worshiping these demonic false gods by taking this important animals, sacrificing them at the temple to the demonic false gods.
[02:28:36] But then Paul rolls up in the city, he preaches the gospel, spirit falls and a whole bunch of people get saved and they're transferred from kingdom of darkness to kingdom of light and now they're on team Jesus.
[02:28:46] They left team demonic false gods and now they're on team Jesus.
[02:28:50] But watch, what you're gonna notice is when somebody gets saved out of a serious sin, they usually have a hypersensitivity to that sin.
[02:29:00] so if you've ever met somebody who got like radically saved out of alcoholism they're usually like really uncomfortable around alcohol or if you met somebody who got saved out of like radical promiscuity they're usually like really uncomfortable around any type of impurity
[02:29:16] the exact same thing happens at Corinth so here's the question Paul's getting ready to answer the Christians at Corinth they're seeing some other church members go to the market at Corinth and 60 to 80% of the meat being sold in the market at Corinth came from animals that were sacrificed to
[02:29:33] these pagan demonic false gods. Their consciences are wigging out. So then they asked Paul, hey, is it okay for Christians to eat meat that came from animals that was sacrificed to these idols?
[02:29:45] Now in the verse before the one we're getting ready to read, Paul says, yes, it's fine because those idols are nothing man it's just a rock or a piece of wood the idols are nothing so he just
[02:29:58] said that but then watch what he says next he says but not everybody possesses this knowledge not everybody's emotions have caught up to the reality that the idols aren't anything some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat sacrificial food
[02:30:13] they think of it as having been sacrificed to a little g god demonic false god and since their conscience is here's that word you say it their conscience is weak it's defiled here's what a weak
[02:30:25] conscience is a weak conscience is an overactive it's an over sensitive conscience that will call things sin that actually aren't sin it'll send out a you're doing something wrong signal when actually according to the bible you're not doing anything wrong okay here's another thing a weak
[02:30:45] conscience walks around and it will very frequently bind everybody else's conscience by their own.
[02:30:53] Okay. Here's what it sounds like. This is usually the, this is the majority of like super judgy Christians. Usually it comes from a weak conscience. Here's what it sounds like.
[02:31:01] Here's what it sounds like. Watch this. It sounds like this. You went to that movie. I can't believe you went to that movie. You went to that movie. And you'd be like, yeah, man, like movie was great.
[02:31:15] theater was freezing went to that movie theater was freezing and they'll respond they'll be like well man i hope you enjoyed it because hell's gonna be hot you know it's that kind of vibe it's like is it now check this out it's a weak conscience now check this out there are some
[02:31:27] things that are sin to obviously but i'm using a generalized analogy now check this out here's what i've learned about people people with weak consciences usually what's going on is they feel condemned by god and that condemnation it leaks out sideways on everybody else around them
[02:31:42] that's what's going on they feel condemned so they end up condemning what you need to know a weak conscience is no joke a weak conscience will ruin your relationship with God because check this check
[02:31:53] this out because if you spend your whole life thinking God is angry with you disgusted with you and disappointed with you when you sin you're never going to run to him you're going to run away
[02:32:05] from him as fast as you can I don't want to be around a God who's angry with me disgusted disappointed. On the other hand, if you've correctly understand that God is not an angry judge for you, man, that actually Jesus Christ was crucified for your sin. He removed your sin
[02:32:19] as far as the East is from the West. The Bible says, this is love. Not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son as the propitiation for our sins. Propitiation is a
[02:32:28] big word that means payment that satisfies that when Jesus hung on a cross and was crucified for your sins, that was the payment that satisfied the wrath of God once and for all for your sin
[02:32:38] And here's the question. If Jesus was crucified for your sin, why are you still crucifying yourself for something Jesus already died for? That's what the gospel does. So he said, man, if you understand that actually God's not an angry judge, he's a loving dad. Then when you sin, listen, one of the
[02:32:57] most important questions you will ever answer with clarity as a disciple is how does God feel about me when I sin? Everything hangs on that question. Check this. Okay. A.W. Tozer said, the most important thing about you is what you think about when you think about God. The Josh Howard and way
[02:33:15] to say that is that me and Maury Povich have the same job. We tell people who the father is. That's great. Okay. I'll check this out. If you didn't like that joke, you get a weak conscience and
[02:33:25] you're going to hate our church. Okay. So check this out. You got to get this, man. This is so important. If you think, if you think God's angry, disgusted, disappointed, you'll always run away when you sin. Okay. You'll, you'll do stuff like this. You'll walk into a worship service and
[02:33:43] during worship, you'd be like, man, I just want to live my, I want to honor God in praise. I want to honor Jesus Christ. But then your little weak conscience will say this. You can't lift your
[02:33:53] hand. Who are you to lift your hands in worship? You've lived such a sinful week. Can I, can I just

[02:33:59] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_05]
[02:33:59] untie a knot for you real quick. Hey man, we're not worshiping God because we're good. We're

[02:34:05] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_06]
[02:34:05] worshiping him because we're forgiven. You understand that? That's not a thing. In fact, can I say this? I mean, this was a knot in my soul for so many years. Let me just untie this
[02:34:16] knot for some of you. If you lived like you had a rough week, man, a lot of sin this week. Well, the Bible says that where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. So when you walk in after
[02:34:28] a sinful week you don't have less to worship God for you have more to worship God for so you go at it bro you go at it okay or you'll start to pray and a weak conscience will be like why would you
[02:34:39] even pray God's never gonna listen to somebody like you this is useless why pray so let me just let me land it here if you think God's angry disgusted disappointed you always run away or
[02:34:52] if you actually calibrate watch this your conscience to the word of God and you remember parable of prodigal son, that when you sin, here's what God is like. If you understand that when you began to wander off into that sin, that God is like a loving adoptive dad. And the second you
[02:35:08] began to wander, he pulled out a little rocking chair on the front porch and he sat down and every single day he's scanning the horizon for the hill that you walked over, waiting for the day when
[02:35:18] your little mug pops up back over that hill to come home. And the second he sees your mug, what he does is he hops up out of the chair, pulls up his little Jewish skirt robe thing, starts running
[02:35:29] at you with joy. And the closer he gets, you start your little lame, I'm sorry speech. And he goes, shut up. I don't want to hear your I'm sorry speech. That's literally what the father does
[02:35:39] in that story. I don't want to hear your I'm sorry speech. And he wraps you in his arms, twirls you around, starts yelling for his servants, get the best ring, get the best robe, kill the best calf. We're throwing a party for this son of mine was lost. And now he's found
[02:35:53] he was gone and now he's home and God's going welcome home man welcome home welcome home that's how God feels about you when you sin he's just like man welcome I just I just I don't care how
[02:36:05] long you be gone I just want you home man so let me do this okay let me land it here so here's my analogy of what's going on so we got um uh one of my daughters who shall remain nameless but she's
[02:36:19] 11 she uh when she was born she was born with this thing where uh the circumference of her head was in the 97th percentile but her body weight was the third percentile so she looked like a
[02:36:32] walking candy apple for the first three years of her life is what she looked like so when she started learning to crawl it looked like she'd be crawling it just looked like she was swinging
[02:36:41] this big old bowling ball head around everywhere she went and then there eventually you guys remember that where eventually there kind of comes this day where she they push a little more towards one and they start pulling up on stuff you remember that and by the way they never pull up on the
[02:36:56] sides they always pull up on the corner it's where all the injuries happen and they start pulling up and when she'd pull up it's like she had to like pull that big old bowling ball head beach ball
[02:37:05] head to do this thing she started pulling up and then she couldn't do it she fought back down but then eventually what she would do is she'd pull up and then she would almost like do this
[02:37:16] thing whip her head up and the longer she did it her little neck muscles finally got strong enough to keep her little bowling ball head up so then she looked and then eventually there came a day
[02:37:27] where she would try to do this thing and she just sort of like they do that little scoot little scoot thing try to take a step and then she'd do this and just the weight of her head gravity wins
[02:37:36] you know weight of her head would take her right down but then eventually and we got it on video I'm not gonna show it to you she eventually got got up and there came a day where uh she pulled
[02:37:48] up and she looked at us a little mischievous look in her eye and uh and she went like this and she didn't fall and then she let go and she looked right back at us and she went
[02:37:59] and she took her first imperfect step and then gravity won it's just like right that immediately now I got it on video I got on video when she took that first imperfect step one step
[02:38:12] Do you know what I didn't say? I didn't say loser. One step. We're the Howard team. I expected better. You know, I didn't do that. I didn't do that. Here's what me and Jana are doing in the
[02:38:27] background of the video. We're crazy, dude. We're going nuts. We're going like this. We're going,

[02:38:34] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_04]
[02:38:34] she's doing it. She's doing it. Jana, get in here. Eliana, get in here. She's doing it. She just

[02:38:43] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_06]
[02:38:43] walk now listen check this out some of you for the first time in your whole life this year you're taking your first little steps ever walking with Jesus Christ and you're taking some imperfect steps and heads up man you're gonna take some steps let me just newsflash and then you're gonna
[02:39:01] fall again and then you're gonna get back up you're gonna take some more steps you're gonna fall again and you know what God's doing what he's what God's not doing is he's not doing what a gross loser he's a loving dad and you're his adopted daughter or adopted son what he's
[02:39:17] doing is he's going they're doing get in here heaven heaven's roaring they're doing it and so here's here's what your year's been like some of you it's like for the first time in your whole
[02:39:29] life you started trying to read a bible for the first time ever and you read for like three days in a row and then you got to a genealogy and you were like i'm out man i'm out listen here's what
[02:39:40] God's doing? He's going, they're doing it. And listen, bro, you fell. Get back up. That's fine.
[02:39:45] Receive grace and move on. You started trying to attend church for the first time ever. You're sitting on stairs. You're like, this is lame. You're sitting on stairs. And for the first time in your life, you attended like three, five weeks in a row. And then it rained and you stayed home.
[02:39:59] You know, I know. That's what you did. And God's going, they're doing it. They're doing it. And listen, here's the biggie. Some of you, while I've been preaching today, your conscience is working with the Holy Spirit to tell you that for the first time in your life, you need to bend your
[02:40:17] knee to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, receive his grace, believe that somehow in some way, the gospel counted for me. And listen, and listen, and, or your conscience is telling you that for the first time in your life, subsequent to your salvation, I'm not talking about you were sprinkled
[02:40:35] as a little baby. Subsequent to your salvation, your conscience is telling you, you need to be baptized in obedience to the commands of Jesus Christ. And what all of heaven is going to be saying today is they're doing it. They're doing it. Heaven's roaring. So at all of our campuses,
[02:40:52] would you guys go and stand up? Go and stand up and check this out. If you got a blue shirt on and you're registered to be baptized, you start moving where you need to move. Everybody else,
[02:41:01] don't move. Look at me. Don't move. Look at me. Everybody else, if you got a blue shirt, You can move.
[02:41:04] Everybody else, don't move.
[02:41:04] Look at me.
[02:41:06] Some of you right now, you're in that spot and you're not ready.
[02:41:10] You didn't come in expecting to be baptized, but we did expect you to be baptized.
[02:41:15] We're prepared for you.
[02:41:17] We're ready for you.
[02:41:18] You need to right now make the decision on the spot to obey Jesus and follow through with baptism.
[02:41:22] Now, check this out.
[02:41:23] You may be going, yeah, dude, but I didn't come dressed for this.
[02:41:25] We got clothes for you back there.
[02:41:27] Yeah, man, but you don't got my size.
[02:41:29] Yeah, we do.
[02:41:29] If they make the size, we got it.
[02:41:30] We got bed sheets back there.
[02:41:31] We're ready.
[02:41:32] All the things.
[02:41:34] if you're like yeah man but you know you got shirts and shorts that's fine but what i'm gonna get my underwear gonna go wet we got underwear for you back there i'm not joking one bit we got
[02:41:41] underwear for you we got towels you may be going yeah man but like the people i came with they're not gonna want to wait for me to go back there and get changed and get dunked they're not gonna
[02:41:49] wait for that hey can i tell you something if the people you're with love you and love jesus enough to attend church with you today can i show you how they're gonna respond if you make that decision
[02:41:58] show them how you're gonna respond that's that's how we're gonna respond we're gonna be going man amen, amen, amen. That's how we're going to be responding. Man, if, if right now you're realizing that you need to be baptized for the first time in your life, subsequent to your salvation,
[02:42:12] when I tell you, I want you to move. If you're at the Rockwall campus, we got people underneath both crosses on either side. They're waiting for you. They're going to get you rolling and all of
[02:42:21] our other campuses move to the back of the auditorium. There's people back there waiting for you. And we're going to celebrate with you today. Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden in your heart. The book of Hebrews says, move while your conscience is speaking. Okay. So Lake
[02:42:39] Point family, we're going to do that. And when these people come up out of the water, what's the first sound they should hear when they come up out of the water? Come on, Matt. We're going
[02:42:46] to celebrate with it. Okay. So if you're realizing right now, you need to be baptized right now, start moving. You start moving to the crosses, other campuses, head back, start moving right now.

[02:42:55] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_09]
[02:42:55] Let's worship, sing, celebrate. Let's dunk. Let's go. Please. Let me say two things real quick. We

[02:51:26] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_06]
[02:51:26] got more people coming. I think we've had over 20 people who just on the spot. Like today's my day.
[02:51:30] Check this out, man. Listen, but listen, listen, listen, listen. That many people have done that, but, um, I got a feeling there's at least one more. I got a feeling there's at least one more.
[02:51:41] So man, some of you may be sitting here and it's like, you're watching this and inside there's that thing. It's like, I, I, I need to do that. Man, don't today. While you hear his voice,
[02:51:51] do not harden your heart, man. Hey, we got people waiting for you. You can head right now.
[02:51:54] crosses, backs of auditoriums. That's awesome. Number two, during this last song, we're doing more song. During this last song, we'll receive our giving. Hey, Lake Point family, thank you.
[02:52:04] Thank you. Thank you. We could not see this stuff happen and do what we do without your generosity.
[02:52:10] Thank you. So listen, while we receive our giving, you give in one of three ways, in the buckets as they come by, in the boxes next to the doors on your way out, or you can text the word give to
[02:52:18] the number 20411. Right now, you keep moving. Let's sing, worship, respond while we dunk. Let's go.