The Only Conscience-Cleanser

How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. (Hebrews 9:14)

Here we are in the modern age — the age of the Internet, smartphones, space travel, and heart transplants — and our problem is fundamentally the same as always: Our consciences condemn us and make us feel unacceptable to God. We are alienated from God. And our consciences bear witness.

We can cut ourselves, or throw our children in the sacred river, or give a million dollars to charity, or serve in a soup kitchen, or a hundred forms of penance or self-injury, and the result will be the same: The stain remains and death terrifies.

We know that our conscience is defiled — not with external things like touching a corpse, a dirty diaper, or a piece of pork. Jesus said it is what comes out of a man that defiles, not what goes in (Mark 7:15–23). We are defiled by attitudes like pride and self-pity and bitterness and lust and envy and jealousy and covetousness and apathy and fear.

The only answer in this modern age, as in every other age, is the blood of Christ. When your conscience rises up and condemns you, where will you turn? Hebrews 9:14 gives you the answer: “How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.”

The answer is: Turn to the blood of Christ. Turn to the only cleansing agent in the universe that can give you relief in life, and peace in death.

John Piper 

Bible Study

1 John 1:7

[7] But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.

Revelation 7:14

[14] I said to him, “Sir, you know.” And he said to me, “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

1 Peter 4:2

[2] so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God.

Hebrews 7:27

[27] He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself.

How Can We Seek God?

“But now, O LORD, You are our Father; we are the clay, and You our potter; and all we are the work of Your hand. Do not be furious, O LORD, nor remember iniquity forever; indeed, please look—we all are Your people!”

ISAIAH 64:8-9

 

PONDER THIS

How do we seek God’s face? There is the prayer that recognizes God’s sovereignty. We have to believe God is God. Verse 8 means, “Lord, You’re King; You’re sovereign. I’m like clay; You’re like a potter. Mold me and make me after Your will. You are King!” God doesn’t want a place in your life. God doesn’t want prominence in your life. He demands and deserves pre-eminence. Are you willing to say, “God, mold me and make me after Your will”? What if God told you to sell your house and give it to missions? What if God said to you, “I want you to do this thing or that thing?” Are you willing? Have you recognized the sovereignty of God?

God wants to extend mercy. God would much rather forgive sin than punish sin. Do you believe that? God doesn’t hold a grudge. God wants to forgive sin. But God cannot put away our sin by forgiving it unless we put it away by forsaking it. The problem with so many of our prayers is we’re not willing to repent. We want God’s mercy, but we seek no repentance. We want the blessings of being with Him while staying far from Him.

What are some things you selfishly don’t want God to ask you to do?

Have you ever asked God to mold your heart? What was that like?

PRACTICE THIS

Surrender to God the things you selfishly don’t want to do.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

The Root of Ingratitude

Although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. (Romans 1:21)

When gratitude springs up in the human heart toward God, he is magnified as the wealthy source of our blessing. He is acknowledged as giver and benefactor and therefore as glorious.

But when gratitude does not spring up in our hearts at God’s great goodness to us, it probably means that we don’t want to pay him a compliment; we don’t want to magnify him as our benefactor.

And there is a very good reason that human beings by nature do not want to magnify God with thanksgiving or glorify him as their benefactor. The reason is that it detracts from our own glory, and all people by nature love their own glory more than the glory of God.

At the root of all ingratitude is the love of one’s own greatness. For genuine gratitude admits that we are beneficiaries of an unearned bequest. We are cripples leaning on the cross-shaped crutch of Jesus Christ. We are paralytics living minute by minute in the iron lung of God’s mercy. We are children asleep in heaven’s stroller.

The natural person, apart from saving grace, hates to think of himself in these images: unworthy beneficiary, cripple, paralytic, child. They rob him of his glory by giving it all to God.

Therefore, while a man loves his own glory, and prizes his self-sufficiency, and hates to think of himself as sin-sick and helpless, he will never feel genuine gratitude to the true God and so will never magnify God as he ought, but only himself.

Jesus said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mark 2:17).

Jesus did not come to minister to those who insist they are well. He demands something great: that we admit we are not great. This is bad news to the arrogant, but words of honey to those who have given up their charade of self-sufficiency and are seeking God.

John Piper 

Bible Study

Ephesians 4:17-18

The New Life

[17] Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. [18] They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.

2 Kings 17:15

[15] They despised his statutes and his covenant that he made with their fathers and the warnings that he gave them. They went after false idols and became false, and they followed the nations that were around them, concerning whom the LORD had commanded them that they should not do like them.

Jeremiah 2:5

[5] Thus says the LORD: 

    “What wrong did your fathers find in me

        that they went far from me,

    and went after worthlessness, and became worthless?

Romans 1:19

[19] For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.

God Wants to Come Down

Oh, that You would rend the heavens! That You would come down! That the mountains might shake at Your presence—as fire burns brushwood, as fire causes water to boil—to make Your name known to Your adversaries, that the nations may tremble at Your presence! When You did awesome things for which we did not look, You came down, the mountains shook at Your presence.” ISAIAH 64:1-3

 

PONDER THIS

Revival is when God comes down. Look in verse one, “Oh, that You would rend the heavens! That You would come down! That the mountains might shake at Your presence.” That’s what revival is; it is a meeting with Almighty God. Most of us are seeking for God to do something. We want it for our church’s sake. We want it for our family’s sake. We want it for the nation’s sake. But we’re seeking God’s hand and not seeking God’s face. Our hearts need to yearn for God. We need to say, “O God, will You come down?”

Now I want to tell you God loves to come down. God the Son stepped out of Heaven and came down to this world of woe that He might save us. On the Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came down and baptized that infant Church with wonderful power. As we study the Word of God, we find out that Jesus is coming down again one day. I want to tell you that if you study the Bible, you’ll find out that God has come down many times in the Bible, and every time, we find revival. And in modern history, if you’ll study the record of the Church, you will find that from time to time, in place to place, God has come down. There is no question—He is ready to come down and move. Will you desire and pray for it?

Do you desire to see revival? Why or why not?

What would it look like to be committed to asking God for revival?

PRACTICE THIS

Pray for revival in your in your heart and in your home.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

How to Magnify God

I will praise the name of God with a song; I will magnify him with thanksgiving. (Psalm 69:30)

There are two kinds of magnifying: microscope magnifying and telescope magnifying. The one makes a small thing look bigger than it is. The other makes a big thing begin to look as big as it really is.

When David says, “I will magnify God with thanksgiving,” he does not mean, “I will make a small God look bigger than he is.” He means, “I will make a big God begin to look as big as he really is.”

We are not called to be microscopes. We are called to be telescopes. Christians are not called to be con-men who magnify their product out of all proportion to reality, when they know the competitor’s product is far superior. There is nothing and nobody superior to God. And so the calling of those who love God is to make his greatness begin to look as great as it really is.

That’s why we exist, why we were saved, as Peter says in 1 Peter 2:9, “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

The whole duty of the Christian can be summed up in this: feel, think, and act in a way that will make God look as great as he really is. Be a telescope for the world of the infinite starry wealth of the glory of God.

This is what it means for a Christian to magnify God. But you can’t magnify what you haven’t seen or what you quickly forget.

Therefore, our first task is to see and to remember the greatness and goodness of God. So we pray to God, “Open the eyes of my heart!” (Ephesians 1:18), and we preach to our souls, “Soul, forget not all his benefits!” (Psalm 103:2).

John Piper