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There Is More: Endgame
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Today we're tackling something we rarely discuss in our culture: what happens when you sin so much that you can't feel it anymore. This sermon centers on Acts chapter 23 and the Apostle Paul's conscience—the spine of his entire ministry.
Paul's story is remarkable. He begins the book of Acts as a religious terrorist, killing people for being Christians. Then God saves him in Acts 9. He starts his first missionary journey in Acts 14, and eventually ends his life being beheaded in Rome for preaching Christ.
Think about that arc: he starts as the one killing Christians and ends as someone killed for being a Christian. This matters for you. If God can use someone like Paul—a persecutor transformed into a proclaimer—God can use anybody. As soon as Jesus rescues you, you're on the rescue team to help save one more.
We're calling this installment of our Acts series "There Is More: Endgame." I borrowed this from the Avengers movies, where Iron Man trades his life to defeat Thanos. Here's what happens: the events in Acts 23 set off a chain of events that leads to Paul's death. He has multiple opportunities to escape the Roman judicial system and live safely, but he doesn't take them. There's something that matters more to Paul than his life.
Paul's life verse is 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 God's grace."
I believe Paul's strategy was intentional: he wanted to share the gospel directly with the Roman emperor, believing that if he could trade his life for the emperor bending his knee to Jesus, it could unleash the gospel through the Roman Empire. And historically, that's exactly what happened. Three hundred years after Paul's death, the same Roman Empire that was demonic and pagan became officially Christian.
Conscience is a compound word: "con" (with or within) and "science" (knowledge). So conscience is within-knowledge—an internal knowledge of right and wrong.
Here's the theology: God is the only just judge of the universe. The Apostles' Creed affirms that God will "judge the quick and the dead." But Ecclesiastes says "God has put eternity into the hearts of man." Your conscience is the inner courtroom that God has built into your heart, constantly making judgments and giving you a sense of what's right and what's wrong.
Your conscience manifests in different ways. Sometimes it creates anxiety: something feels off, dirty, and you sense you need to get out of a situation. Other times it urges you toward good: in moments when you face pressure to do wrong or mock for following Jesus, your conscience wells up inside saying, "Stand firm. Don't flinch. If you compromise your convictions, you won't be able to live with yourself."
The Holy Spirit works with your conscience, but they are not the same. The Apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 4: "My conscience is clean, but that does not make me innocent." Your conscience is fallible—it can be wrong. The Holy Spirit, however, is infallible.
Only Christians have the Holy Spirit, but everybody—saved and lost—has a conscience. This answers a common question: "When God judges the world, how will He judge people who never heard His Word?" Romans 2 explains that people who perish without God's law will be judged according to their conscience. God judges them by the knowledge they have. Everyone possesses an inner sense of right and wrong.
This is why this sermon matters urgently. Paul writes to Timothy in 1 Timothy 1:18-19:
"Timothy, my son, I've given you this command... so that by recalling them, you may fight the battle well, holding on to faith and a good conscience. Which some have rejected and so have suffered shipwreck in regard to the faith."
Here's the critical truth: when you reject your conscience and sin repeatedly, what was once a loud voice becomes quieter and quieter until you can sin and feel nothing at all.
Think of it this way. The first time you did the sin you're trapped in now, your conscience screamed "No!" You rejected it. You kept going, and it got quieter: "No... no... no..." Eventually, your conscience barely whispers. Now you can sin and feel nothing.
A plane without a warning system eventually crashes. When your conscience stops warning you, you're headed for spiritual disaster.
A good conscience is mentioned eight or nine times in the New Testament. Paul declares in Acts 23:1:
"My brothers, I have fulfilled my duty to God in all good conscience."
Again in 1 Timothy 1:5:
"The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith."
A good conscience means: when you do good things, you feel good; when you do bad things, you feel bad. A good conscience represents an appropriate sensitivity to sin and an appropriate delight in righteousness—you see what God sees, feel what God feels, and care about what God cares about.
When someone sins terribly and feels devastated—unable to sleep or eat, deeply troubled—that discomfort isn't a sign something is wrong with them. It means something is right with them. Their conscience is working properly. That guilty feeling is evidence of a functioning moral compass.
A defiled conscience is when you sin repeatedly and rationalize it, or when you spend time without discernment absorbing the world's value systems and emotional calibrations. Your conscience becomes calibrated to the world's judgments instead of God's Word, giving you bad readings when you do good things and good readings when you do bad things.
The Bible emphasizes in Hebrews 5 that your conscience can be trained. It states: "solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil."
Romans 12 explains the mechanism: "Don't conform to the pattern of this world." The Greek word for "pattern" literally means "mold." The world is like concrete being poured into a mold—it takes whatever shape the mold has set. Similarly, the world is constantly trying to reshape you out of the image of Jesus and into the image of Satan, the god of this world, through entertainment, media, education systems, and government.
The solution is clear: "Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing, and perfect will." To train your conscience, you must immerse yourself in God's Word.
One of the most important responsibilities of Christian parents is to carefully shape the consciences of your children and protect them from anything that might malshape those consciences. Your children need your active guidance and authority.
Parents must pay attention to:
The friends your children spend time with. These aren't just playmates—they're shaping consciences. If your children are regularly with peers who celebrate evil and move away from good and holy things, it's your responsibility as a parent to step in and make choices for them, especially when they're young.
Social media consumption. Hours spent on social media isn't merely entertainment or social connection—it's actively shaping your child's conscience. The world's system is defiling your child's moral compass, and you must be aware of this.
The media, entertainment, movies, and shows your children watch. Many Christian parents are not exercising wise discernment here. When evaluating media, ask: How does this shape my child's conscience? It's not simply about whether evil things appear in the content—it's about whether evil is celebrated and normalized.
Consider the difference between old war movies and modern entertainment. War movies contained violence, but they celebrated values like self-sacrifice, valor, honor, and integrity. They made clear distinctions between good and evil. In contrast, much contemporary content normalizes and celebrates worldly value systems that desecrate a child's conscience.
You are not your child's friend—you are their parent and their God-given authority. God gave you that authority to stand between Satan and your children, to fight for your family. Fathers especially: show up. Go after your hearts of your kids. Fight for your family. This is the first generation in American history where more children grow up without a father in the home than with one. Every man at Lakepointe who stands up and acts like a man and goes after the hearts of his kids and fights for his family—that will change everything.
The Bible speaks of a seared conscience in 1 Timothy 4:1: "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 seared."
Consider a laborer's hands. Through years of constant friction—swinging hammers, turning wrenches, hanging drywall—repeated blisters form, pop, and develop tougher skin. This process repeats until thick, rough calluses form. The hands become so toughened that they can endure extreme friction without feeling any pain.
Or consider searing a steak on a grill at 500+ degrees. The intense heat seals the outer layer of the meat, making it impenetrable so nothing can sink in and all the juices remain trapped inside.
A seared conscience works the same way. When your conscience is exposed to so much sin for so long that it loses all feeling, nothing can penetrate it anymore—not the love of God, not the law of God, nothing. That is a seared conscience.
Here's the reality: everybody has at least one area of their life where their conscience is seared because they've normalized that sin. This is why you desperately need a band of brothers or a band of sisters in your life—people who can call you back to what God has called you to be, who can step into your blind spots and say, "Hey, that's not who you are. You're a son of the living God. Let's get back on the path."
Consider deputizing people in your life. When a city deputizes someone, it gives them a badge and responsibility to act if they see the law being broken. Similarly, you should identify trusted people and tell them: "If you see anything in my life that's out of line with my calling, I need you to tell me. That's your job."
This isn't weakness—it's wisdom. You cannot trust yourself completely. If you don't believe you need this kind of accountability, you don't understand reality.
The fourth type of conscience is a weak conscience. To understand this, consider what was happening in the church at Corinth. Two massive temples to demonic false gods—Aphrodite and Apollo—dominated the city. For generations, Corinthians grew up worshiping at these temples, sacrificing animals to these demonic powers.
Then Paul arrived and preached the gospel. The Spirit fell, and many were saved—transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light, moving from team "demonic false gods" to team Jesus.
When someone is radically saved out of a serious sin, they typically develop a hyper-sensitivity to that sin. Someone saved out of alcoholism becomes uncomfortable around alcohol. Someone saved out of promiscuity becomes uncomfortable around any form of impurity. This same dynamic occurred in Corinth among the new believers, as they grappled with the presence of food that had been sacrificed to idols in the marketplace.
When somebody gets saved out of a serious sin, they typically develop a hyper-sensitivity to that sin. If someone was radically saved out of alcoholism, they're usually very uncomfortable around alcohol. If someone was saved out of promiscuity, they're usually uncomfortable around any form of impurity.
This same dynamic was occurring in Corinth. The Christians there saw other church members buying meat from the marketplace, where 60 to 80% of the meat came from animals sacrificed to pagan demonic false gods. Their consciences were troubled, so they asked Paul: "Is it okay for Christians to eat meat that came from animals sacrificed to these idols?"
Paul responded that yes, it's fine—the idols are nothing, just rock or wood. But then he added a crucial qualifier: "Not everybody possesses this knowledge. Not everybody's emotions have caught up to the reality that the idols aren't anything." Some people still thought of sacrificial food as genuinely sacrificed to false gods. Their conscience was weak and defiled.
A weak conscience is an overactive, oversensitive conscience that calls things sin that actually aren't sin. It sends out a "you're doing something wrong" signal when, according to the Bible, you're not doing anything wrong.
A weak conscience frequently binds everybody else's conscience by its own standard. This is usually what sounds like judgy Christianity. It sounds like: "You went to that movie? I can't believe you went to that movie." When you respond that the movie was great, they say something like, "Well, I hope you enjoyed it because hell's going to be hot."
Here's what's really going on: People with weak consciences usually feel condemned by God, and that condemnation leaks out sideways onto everybody else around them. They feel condemned, so they end up condemning.
A weak conscience is no joke. It will ruin your relationship with God. If you spend your whole life thinking God is angry with you, disgusted with you, and disappointed with you, then when you sin, you're never going to run to him—you're going to run away from him as fast as you can. You don't want to be around a God who's angry, disgusted, and disappointed.
However, if you correctly understand that God is not an angry judge, that Jesus Christ was crucified for your sin and removed your sin as far as the east is from the west, everything changes. 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 big word meaning the payment that satisfies. When Jesus hung on the cross and was crucified for your sins, that was the payment that satisfied the wrath of God once and for all for your sin.
Here's the question: If Jesus was crucified for your sin, why are you still crucifying yourself for something Jesus already died for?
One of the 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.
If you think God is angry, disgusted, and disappointed, you'll always run away when you sin. You'll walk into a worship service wanting to honor God in praise, but then your weak conscience will say: "Who are you to lift your hands and worship? You've lived such a sinful week." Let me untie a knot for you: We're not worshiping God because we're good. We're worshiping him because we're forgiven.
When you've had a rough week full of sin, the Bible says: "Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more." So when you walk in after a sinful week, you don't have less to worship God for—you have more to worship God for.
Or you'll start to pray and a weak conscience will say: "Why would you even pray? God's never going to listen to somebody like you. This is useless." But look at the parable of the prodigal son. When you sin, here's what God is like:
When you begin to wander into sin, God is like a loving adoptive dad. The second you begin to wander, he pulls out a little rocking chair on the front porch and sits down every single day, scanning the horizon for the hill that you walked over, waiting for the day when your little face pops back up over that hill to come home.
The second he sees you, he hops up out of the chair, pulls up his robe, and starts running at you with joy. As he gets closer, you start your little "I'm sorry" speech, and he says: "Shut up. I don't want to hear your 'I'm sorry' speech." That's literally what happens in that story. He wraps you in his arms, twirls you around, and starts yelling for his servants: "Get the best ring. Get the best robe. Kill the best calf. We're throwing a party! This son of mine was lost and now he's found. He was gone and now he's home."
That's how God feels about you when you sin. He says: "Welcome home, man. Welcome home. I don't care how long you've been gone. I just want you home."
Imagine a little child learning to walk—pulling up on furniture, almost falling, trying again. The first time they take that imperfect step and then fall, do you as a parent say, "Loser. We expected better"? No. You go crazy. You're yelling: "She's doing it! She's doing it! Get in here! She just walked!"
Some of you, for the first time in your whole life this year, you're taking your first little steps walking with Jesus Christ. And you're going to take some imperfect steps. News flash: you're going to fall again. Then you're going to get back up, take some more steps, and fall again.
Do you know what God's doing? He's not saying, "Gross loser." He's a loving dad, and you're his adopted daughter or adopted son. What he's doing is cheering: "They're doing it! They're doing it! Get in here! Heaven's roaring! They're doing it!"
Maybe for the first time in your whole life, you started trying to read a Bible. You read for three days in a row and then hit a genealogy and thought, "I'm out, man." Here's what God's doing: "They're doing it." You fell. Get back up. Receive grace and move on.
Maybe you started attending church for the first time ever. You sat in the back, it felt lame, but you kept showing up—three, five weeks in a row. Then it rained and you stayed home. God's going: "They're doing it. They're doing it."
And here's the biggest one: 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 knee to the lordship of Jesus Christ and receive his grace. Or your conscience is telling you that for the first time in your life, subsequent to your salvation, you need to be baptized in obedience to the commands of Jesus Christ.
What all of heaven is going to be saying today is: They're doing it. They're doing it. Heaven's roaring.
