Sermon: Myth# 7, Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
“Your conscience helps you make the right choices.” This statement is often made to suggest that everyone knows right from wrong, and our “conscience” should guide us in the process. This sounds right, and in fact, the Apostle Paul said in the above Scripture that “the creation of the world” declares “God’s invisible qualities.” Because of this, everyone is “without excuse” and should know right from wrong. However, the Scripture goes on to say that because of sin, our hearts “were darkened” and God gave us over to “the sinful desires” of our hearts. Therefore, our conscience alone is not adequate to help us make moral decisions.
Dr. D. Briscoe refers to humanity’s ability to know God through the power of creation when he wrote the following: “When Paul spoke of God having shown the truth about Himself to mankind he was not referring solely to an inner subjective experience in which man had an intuitive sense of God. God has revealed Himself in the created world in such a way that “His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made” (v. 20). From this statement it is apparent that man’s intelligence and observational powers, as well as his moral insight and spiritual intuition, are all involved in God’s self-revelation to man.
I remember on one particularly stormy night flying with two friends in a light aircraft from Tennessee to Wisconsin. A massive storm stretched across our path and our pilot elected to press on regardless. First we looked for a break in the storm but found none. Then we tried to fly over the storm but found it went higher than we could! So we attempted to fly under the problem, but this was not possible, so we took a deep breath and flew straight through! Air currents of unbelievable force picked up our small plane and literally hurled it around the sky. The crash of thunder was so loud at times it drowned the noise of the engine, and the lightning was so intense that we were blinded by its persistent flashes crackling all around us. I have never been so glad to put my two big feet on terra firma as when we finally arrived at our destination. But I came out of the experience enriched. As never before I had seen the sheer immensity of the power of nature, but I had also been able to interpret this power as a demonstration of God’s “invisible attributes … even His eternal power and Godhead.”
This ability to translate what theologians call “general revelation” into the knowledge of God’s invisible attributes is a gift of God without which man would see, feel, hear, and experience only inanimate, impersonal forces and respond to them as such. Fortunately, human experience shows that man in all types of civilizations has looked at such forces with much greater insight and has been able to see behind them (however imperfectly) that which points to God Himself.”
Though we can know about God through creation, our sin does not allow us to know how to please Him or how to make the right moral decisions through creation. How then do we do this? This coming Sunday we will talk about how to make proper moral decision through the authority of Scripture, the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the aid of the Church as we continue our sermon series, “Dumb Things Smart Christians Believe.” Hope to see you then!
