Well, I had originally intended on actually doing the second dispensation, all of it, dispensation of conscious, and try to get it all finished in one sitting, but I realized that we probably need to spend a little bit of time talking about the conscious first. I want us to look, and you've got a handout there, in your prayer list. If you didn't get a prayer list, you can go back there and get one. It's got the handout in it. But before we get into this dispensation of the conscience, let's begin by defining what the meaning of conscience actually is. Man's conscience is simply the knowledge of good and evil which God has put in man. The knowledge of good and evil which God has put in man. Turn to Romans chapter 1 and Romans chapter 2. We're going to take a look at some things that the New Testament says about the conscious. It helps us to understand the conscious a little bit better. Romans chapter 1. The whole thing that we're going to be seeing when we actually get into the dispensation is that the conscious is not adequate. for a man to find his way back to God, just not. The conscious didn't, man just using his consciousness, his conscious, wound up with a terrible situation here on the earth. So bad that the Lord destroyed everything except the animals that went on the ark, and seven people that went on the ark. He destroyed everything else with the flood and started all over again. That tells you, when you let your conscience be your guide, what the end result is. You ever heard somebody say, let your conscience be your guide? Well, it's not a good admonition, because our conscience is flawed. is flawed by sin. Of course, Adam and Eve sinned. We saw that. They ended that innocence that they had, and so they got that conscious of good and evil, but it was not adequate. Look at Romans 1, verse number 18. Says, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness. Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them. God gave us a conscious, he gave us a God consciousness, amen, for God has showed it unto them. Look at Romans chapter number 2 and verse number 12. And it says here, for as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law. Now that, let me back up here just a little bit. What Paul is addressing here in Romans chapter number 2, the Jews got to where they were a little bit proud of, well, we've got the law and the Gentiles don't have the law. And here in chapter 2, Paul's argument is, yeah, you got the law, but you don't do the law. They don't have the law. And that's what we see here in verse 12. For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law, and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law. For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified." Now how many are going to do the law? Zero. Nobody can do the law. You can't do all the law. You can't do the law. And he says, notice verse 14, For when the Gentiles which have not the law do by nature, by nature, the things contained in the law, these having not the law are a law unto themselves, which show, notice this, which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscious, also bearing witness in their thoughts to meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another." In other words, what they do is, you know, they got an idea that this is wrong and then Some of them will go against what they know their conscience tells them is wrong. Well, they're going to be judged for that. Not everybody has the same kind of conscience to the same extent. And when it was talked about a while ago, don't say, let your conscience be your guide. You wouldn't want to do that if you went to the country where headhunters were at. So let your conscience be your guide. Well, see, they had no conscience about taking your head off. Not at all. You wouldn't want them to live by that rule. Proverbs 20 verse 27 says, The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord, searching all the inward parts of the belly. Our spirit tells us some things. The word translated is conscious, and the New Testament means a knowledge with oneself. It denotes an abiding consciousness or awareness whose nature it is to bear witness to the subject regarding his own conduct in a moral sense. An awareness of evil. You've got an awareness of evil, you've got an awareness of, I ought not to do this, and then you do it anyway. And as you're violating, you're conscious. So conscious is the awareness mankind has of himself in his relation to God, manifesting itself in the spirit, in the heart. When I was looking at this, I originally put that down for just an introduction of what I was going to say tonight with regard to the dispensation of conscience. Maybe we need to just take a look, first of all, at what the Bible says about the conscience. Help us to understand conscience a little bit better. Then, next week, Lord willing, we'll come back and we'll actually take a look at the the second dispensation, which is called the dispensation of conscience, what we call it anyway. But what does the Bible say about the conscience? Number one, the conscience must be cleansed by the blood of Christ. It's not adequate alone. If you just follow your conscience, you're going to be in a heap of trouble. You're still a sinner. You need to be saved by grace. The only cure for a conscience such as that is to be cleansed by the blood of Christ. Hebrews 9.14 says, How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God." I'll probably point this out when we get to our text over in the book of Genesis. Take a look at just the religion you find with Abel and Cain. You think Abel and Cain both knew what the right thing to do was? Cain decided, well, I think God ought to act this way. And he acted according to what he thought God should do, rather than the way God had told Adam and Eve and had been passed to them. So Abel offered the blood sacrifice, which God required, and he did not. And so he followed his conscience in that, but he did wrong. There was no blood sacrifice. But the conscience must be cleansed by the blood of Christ, and that's because mankind's total being, including his conscience, has been tainted corrupted or adversely affected by sin. Do you understand that? Our whole being is corrupted because of sin. That's why Christ had to come into the world. Even after we're saved, this old flesh has still got the sin issues, doesn't it? It just does. If you follow your flesh, you're going to wind up in the wrong place. If you follow your own human spirit and your own human reasoning, you're going to wind up in a bad place. We need to follow God. We need to listen to the Holy Spirit of God. Second thing here, the conscious convicts of sin. And I'm going to use an example of the Lord Jesus Christ in John chapter 8 as he is speaking with a group of scribes and Pharisees who had brought to him a woman who was taken in adultery. And we'll see this, look at John 8, look at verse number 3. John 8 verse number 3, And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery, and when they had set her in the midst, They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery in the very act. Now they think they're going to get won over on Jesus here. The whole thing is set up really to, they've got a problem with Jesus and they're trying to catch Him in whatever they can catch Him in. Verse number 5, they're instructing the one whose law this is, about the law. Now Moses in the law commanded us that such should be stoned, but what sayest thou? This they said, notice, tempting him that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down and with his finger wrote on the ground as though he heard them not. We don't know what he wrote on the ground. He could have just been drawing pictures for all we know. He could have just been doodling. You ever just doodle and there's nothing there? When I'm on the phone sometimes, I doodle. I've got a little scratch pad right there. If I'm talking on the phone, I'm doing all kinds of stuff on that pad. I can take that pad and take the sheet off and I've got a clean sheet again. Jesus just stooped down and wrote on the ground. He says in verse 9, And what they heard, he says, look at verse number seven. I'm sorry, I skipped a verse there. So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself and said unto them, and this is very pointed, he that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. Okay? Ooh, that's convicting, isn't it? Again, he stooped down and wrote on the ground. I've heard some preachers say, well, he was writing down what their sins were on the ground. Well, we don't know that. It just says he was writing on the ground. It could have been, but it may not have been. I think that phrase, he that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. It says in verse 9, and when they heard it, They which heard it, being convicted, notice, by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last. And Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? Hath no man condemned thee? She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee. Go and sin no more. They were convicted by their own conscience. Understand that the Holy Spirit uses the Word of God. And what Jesus spoke was the Word of God. But your conscience, the Holy Spirit uses your conscience to bring forth that conviction in the soul. That's why it's important for us to be in the Word. If we're not in the Word with the Holy Spirit showing us what's right and what's wrong, we can get some wrong ideas. We read that verse in Romans 2 verse 15, we show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscious also bearing witness and their thoughts, the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another. A while ago when we were in Romans, so the conscious convicts a man of sin. And then we see a third thing, the conscious should be kept pure and void of offense. Of course, in order to do that, it's got to first be made pure, right? It's got to be made pure by the blood of the Lamb. You've got to be saved. Otherwise, there's no way to keep it pure and void of offense. But Paul, you know, Paul had He probably had plenty of things in his life where he said, I've really done wrong in the past. He saw to it that Christians were arrested and even killed, put to death. But after he got saved, that slate was wiped clean. Notice what he says. I'm going to read these verses to you. I've given them to you on the handout so you can look them up. Acts 23 verse 1, Paul's earnestly beholding the council. He's standing before the council. It said, Men and brethren, I have lived in all good conscience before God until this day. He's talking about from the time that he got saved to that day, his conscience was different. Before that point, his conscience had been really seared. But when he got saved, things changed. We'll talk about the searing here in a little bit. Acts 24 verse 16, Paul also is speaking, and he says, And herein do I exercise myself to have always a conscious void of offense toward God and toward men. In other words, he guarded his actions, guarded his words, guarded his thoughts, so that he was not offending mankind, and wasn't offending God. And so that's the kind of conscious that we should seek to have. One that's pure and void of offense. Look at 1 Timothy. I'm going to have you turn to these because they're all together. Look at 1 Timothy and chapter 1 and verse number 5. And all these talk about a good conscious or a pure conscious. First Timothy 1.5, he says, he's telling Timothy, now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned. And both of these were men of God. What's good for a man of God is good for the people of God too, to have a good conscience. But especially for a man of God, if you're going to be in that position, you need to have a good conscience. And then we see in verse number 19 of that same chapter, chapter 1 verse 19, he's telling Timothy some things he needed to do, holding faith and a good conscience, which some having put away, concerning faith have made shipwreck." So, a good conscience. He mentions it twice in this first chapter. Then, chapter 3, verse number 9, So it's holding the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience. And he's talking about the qualifications for deacons and how they are to hold the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience. So the leadership of the church, the basis of leadership is faith and holding the mystery of the faith, but you hold that in a pure conscience. And then 2 Timothy, you've got to turn to the next book, 2 Timothy, chapter number one. And verse number three, and he says here, he says, I thank God whom I serve from my forefathers with pure conscience that without ceasing I have remembrance of thee in my prayers night and day. So he was not afraid to say, I pray for you all the time. And he could say that and he had pure conscience saying that because it was the truth. It was true. We see also in 1 Peter 3, 16. says that we as believers, we as Christians should be having a good conscience that whereas they, talking about the world, speak evil of you as of evildoers, they may be ashamed that falsely accuse you of your good conversation in Christ. In other words, be like Daniel. You know, Daniel, the only thing they could find in Daniel to accuse him of was with regard to his Lord. You know, the guy just prays all the time. We really have a problem with that. He just prays all the time. Well, let's get the king to make a law that you can't pray to anybody except the king for a period of 30 days. Well, Daniel was just going to do what He knew he needed to do. He wasn't afraid to go to the lion's den. He knew God would take care of him. Anyway, have a good conscience. Number four, the conscience motivates the believer to do right. I should say that with the help of the Holy Spirit and God's Word. The Holy Spirit takes the Word of God and helps the conscience motivate us to do the right thing. Romans 13 verse 5 talks about our relationship to government leaders. Therefore you must needs be subject not only for wrath but also for conscience sake. In other words, we're told some certain things about leadership and how we're to respond, and we're to have a good conscience in that. First Peter 2.19, For this is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully. And that's what we see in the book of Acts, when Paul and Silas got chunked in prison for doing what? For preaching. for preaching. They weren't afraid. They were beaten. They were thrown in there. They just sang songs and hymns. God gave them an opportunity to be able to win the jailer and his family to the Lord. They were willing to suffer grief wrongfully. The conscious can be seared, and this is something to be cautious of. Especially in the lost world, but it can happen in a Christian too. If your conscious convicts you of something over and over and over again, you just keep sinning against your conscious. Your conscious says, that's wrong, you ought not be involved in that, and you get involved in it anyway. you're not going to respond to that at all. It's kind of like back when I was going to Tennessee Temple, I had an ingrown toenail on my big toe on one of my feet. And they not only cut it out, they cauterized. The reason for cauterizing it was it takes the feeling out of it. They didn't seal it with a hot iron, but they did with a chemical substance. A hot iron would do the same thing. It kills the nerves on the skin, the nerve receptors, that tell you that you ought not to be doing that. That's what searing is. 1 Timothy 4 verse 1-2 says, Now the Spirit speaketh expressly that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of the devil, speaking lies and hypocrisy, having their conscience seared with a hot iron. It's where they don't respond any longer to what the conscience is trying to tell them. The conscious can be defiled. Titus 1.15, to the pure all things are pure, but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure, but even their mind and conscious is defiled. And that's what we see in the lost world quite a bit. People's conscious are defiled. In fact, sometimes you see some folks that have heard say, that person has no conscious. They have sinned against the conscience so much that they don't respond to the conscience anymore. That's a sad way to be. And then the conscience can be weak. And I'm going to have you turn to this and we'll be done, okay? And that's 1 Corinthians chapter number 8. 1 Corinthians chapter number 8. And this is with regard to believers. Conscious can be weak in believers. Somebody may get saved and they see you do something that they've got a problem with. They've always been taught that's wrong. They're conscious. They can't get involved in it because it's wrong. And that's what he's talking about here with regard to, and we don't have this problem today, but eating things offered to idols. That's not a problem we have today, but there was a problem back during the Church of Corinth days. But it's got a wider application than that. 1 Corinthians 8 verse number 9 says, But take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours becomes a stumbling block to them that are weak. In other words, there's nothing wrong with eating meat that's been offered to idols, because the idol is not anything. Okay? And that's what he's saying. Look at verse 10. For if any man see thee which has knowledge, sit at meat in the idol's temple, shall not the conscious of him which is weak be emboldened to eat those things which are offered to idols? You know, he's got a conscious that says, you know, that just don't seem right. You know, I'm saved now and those were idols there. I just don't feel right going in there and everybody sees you going there. He said, well, and your conscience tells you, his conscience tells him it's not right to do, but you're okay with it. That's what it's talking about. He says, verse 11, and through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish for whom Christ died. It's not right to sin against your conscience. But when ye sin so against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, ye sin against Christ. Wherefore if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh, while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend. I'm glad we don't have that problem today. So the admonition by many today that says to let your conscience be your guide is totally wrong. Don't listen to it. Don't abide by that. Don't go by that. Conscience is not a sufficient guide. We're going to see that when we get into our text over in the book of Genesis and the time period that we're going to be looking at. Conscious does not always keep mankind from doing wrong. We're going to see that. Conscious says to do right, but it does not always say or know what is right. Conscious will not bring mankind back to God. That's the bottom line. Mankind could not make his way back to God by following his conscious. So conscious is the knowledge of good and evil, which God has put in mankind. Amen. Well, that's the Bible study for this evening. Let's pull back our prayer list, we'll pray for the needs, and we'll be dismissed. Appreciate you.