A Sermon by Pastor Tom Lacey . . .

Holy Spirit as Conscience

John 16:5-11, Preached by Tom Lacey at Congregational Church of Boca Raton, October 15, 2006

A burglar breaks into a house and as he is prowling around he hears a voice say, "Jesus is watching you." He jumps, thinking he’s been caught, but there’s no one around. Assuming it was his nerves or his conscience, he continues pilfering the jewelry, good silverware etc., when once again he hears, "Jesus is watching you." This time he knows he’s not imagining it, and turns around to see where the noise is coming from—a cage in the corner with a beaked occupant. "So it was you saying that, eh bird? So what’s your name then?" “Moses,” the bird replies. The burglar looks puzzled. "What sort of dummy names a parrot Moses?" Just then he hears a menacing snarl from the other side of the room, and the parrot says, "The same ones who would call a Rottweiler Jesus."

After meeting this “Jesus,” this fellow wishes it would have been his conscience snarling at him. Fact is, his conscience was probably also growling the whole time, but since it won’t take actual chunks of flesh out of us, sometimes we don’t pay as close attention to it as we should. And that’s a problem. The guilt, the feeling of “going bad” if you go ahead and do it, is the work of the Holy Spirit, who “convicts the world of sin.” It is your conscience talking. As Paul put it, “If I build up again the very things that I once tore down, then I demonstrate that I am a transgressor.” Gal. 2:18

When we fail to follow what is best, and follow instead what is worst, then we trespass onto forbidden territory. Paul says that when you finally make it back to where you belong, your time away shows you have transgressed. …And your conscience should be stinging. If you do this too many times, and make a habit as well as a life of it, you will be like the person about whom someone spoke, "She won't listen to her conscience. She doesn't want to take advice from a total stranger."

What we want to see this morning is that God doesn’t always play nice with us. We can do what we want but a price tag is attached: a guilty conscience. We know that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and we know the Lord God is a jealous God. So guess what! These chickens come home to roost in your conscience. This is God’s world. We are the Lord’s. He made us. And if you think you are going to go off and do whatever you want without God fighting for you and even against you, then you don’t know him very well. The Lord wants you, deserves you, and will chase us down and out of any wrong-headed and dark-hearted choices we make. If you want a fight, you’ve come to the right place. This is our Father’s World, and he is the ruler yet! And this includes our souls. So make it easy on yourself. Don’t go against your conscience. Listen to the Lord. Obey the Spirit. Do what is good.

 As human beings made in the image of God, we have the capacity to respond to the prompting of God. There is something called “prevenient grace,” which refers to the movement of the Holy Spirit of God in the hearts of people, turning them toward God and God’s way even before they were aware of God’s presence. Now we often speak of being tempted to do evil, but we can also be tempted to do good. There are a million temptations to do good which come to us during a lifetime: a kind word which should be said, the right deed to be done. Unfortunately, we are pretty good at resisting these temptations. But when we follow one of these good temptations it becomes  another brick in the tower of strength that builds up our fortress of character. We become that person who does good and turns away from wrong. We are the one who freely compliments others. You are the one who gives the credit to someone else. You are the good one who notices when someone needs that extra moment of your precious time. Don’t resist doing good. Give into it. Build up the strength of your character. Be generous. Humble. Kind.  

Fact is, the conscience is more than what some psychologists say it is. It is more than merely the sense of right and wrong which we get from our parents or from the society around us. I mean, sometimes our consciences tell us to go against our parents and the society around us, sometimes at great personal cost to ourselves. The early Christians’ consciences often led them to death in Roman arenas since they refused to bow their knee to Caesar. You see, the truth for them was that they “must obey God rather than any human authority.” Acts 5:29  But they seem like such heroes and saints and sometimes we can’t even stop ourselves from not honking our horn if the first car at the stop light takes a millisecond too long to go on the green, to say nothing about being thrown to lions for our faith. There must be a checklist against which we can test our action in order to see whether it should be done or not done. Years ago Harry Emerson Fosdick, pastor of Riverside Church in New York City, preached a sermon entitled, Six Ways to Tell Right From Wrong. I would like to pass on four of Dr. Fosdick’s insights to you. The first one is the test of best self: Is this action consistent with my best self? Does this check out with who I really am and I really stand for in life? Second is the test of public scrutiny: Would I want this action be revealed in public? Is this something I would be willing for other people to know about me?  Third is the test against your personal hero. Submit the action to your most admired personality. What would be his or her reaction to this? Fourth is the future projection test. To what other events or consequences is this likely to lead? Consider what might come of this action. You know, when the pressure is really on, we have to keep our back up against the wall of our principals and permit nobody to push us around. Stick to your guns. Live by your ideals. Fight for what is right.

So let’s just say, we do something wrong. And our conscience presses in on us. We feel guilty. Now what? People try many ways to get rid of guilt. Some of us try to deny it. We're like the clergyman who, walking down the road, came upon a group of boys surrounding a dog. "What are you doing with the dog?" the kindly clergyman asked. "We're having a contest," said one of the boys. "Whoever can tell the biggest lie wins the dog." "Oh, my, my, my," said the minister, "when I was a little boy like you, I never told lies." There was a moment of stunned silence. Then, one of the boys responded, "Okay, mister, you win the dog!"

Our Christian faith tells the truth about ourselves. We are indeed guilty. You and I do fail ourselves, our families, our friends, and God. "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." 1 John 1:8 "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Romans 3:23 "None is righteous, no, not one." Romans 3:10  I mean, what parent hasn't felt guilty about disciplining the children either too much or too little? And that's only one of many things that can make a parent feel guilty. A book entitled, How to Be a Guilty Parent listed 85 different types of parent guilt. Like "Working Mother Guilt." That's what happens when you get a telephone call that goes: "Hello, Mom? Is that you, Mom? I can hardly remember your voice any longer! Now, I know you don't like me to bother you at work, Mom, but, I've really got to know: where do you keep the instant coffee? I'd like to give the Fire Department and the Police some coffee before they leave." But, of course, it isn't only parents who feel guilty. Children sometimes feel guilty about letting down their parents. The great British author, Samuel Johnson, reproached himself his whole adult life for what took place when he was a child. As a boy, Johnson had refused to help his father by watching his father's bookstall. Johnson never forgot that incident and never forgave himself for refusing his father. In his seventies, he went back to the spot where his father's bookstall had stood in the market, and stood there himself, in the rain, for hours, hatless, trying to come to peace with the fact that he had refused to help his father. Maybe that was in the age of Guilt, and nobody would do that today, but still … parents can feel guilty. Children can feel guilty. Sometimes students feel guilty about not getting the most out of their education. Homeowners can feel guilty about taking a Saturday snooze instead of fixing the faucet. And so on.

We can try to deny our guilt. But life won't let us long deny our guilt. So then, maybe if we can't deny our guilt, maybe we can try to work it off. But it's impossible to work off our guilt, even if Earl on the show, My Name Is Earl, is trying and doing the best he can at it. If you watch that show, Earl’s guilt is only relieved because the people against whom he committed these bad things forgive him. He never works them off; they let him off, and rightly so. Perhaps we can ease our feelings by immersing ourselves in psychology. Most bookstores have a pop psychology, "self-help" section. Usually there are a dozen paperbacks in that section (often best sellers) about getting rid of the “guilts.” They give us advice like "turn off the Mom and Pop tapes in our head," stop collecting "guilt stamps," "learn to live with the normal crazies," or avoid your "Erroneous Zones." Good, solid psychology is valuable, of course. Psychology itself, and its practitioners, have been an enormous blessing to society. These books can be helpful. But, what these books offer is a reduction of guilt, not a cure. Responsible writers are careful not to promise their readers too much. Paula and Dick McDonald, for example, authors of Guilt Free claim that by following their program most people can reduce their guilt load by up to sixty percent! But, the remaining forty percent, according to the McDonalds, is "not solvable." They tell their readers to learn to "live around it." There's no true escape in pop psychology, either. So the bad news is that we feel guilty because we should face the biblical truth about ourselves, we are guilty. But, the Good News is, "Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more." Romans 5:20 Our sins may be great, but not greater than God's amazing grace. This is also the biblical truth. So, where can we turn for release from guilt? To our faith in God’s grace.  Listen to the words of the Apostle Paul: “If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, will he not also give us all things with him? ... Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? ... No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:31b-32, 35, 37-39 Christ has overcome the world. This is what the Holy Spirit is telling you. Listen. Believe. Follow.

Return to Sermons (table of contents)

Return to Homepage of the Congregational Church of Boca Raton