If you didn't bring a Bible with you this evening, hold your hand up real high.

The ushers have extra Bibles.

We'd be glad to let you use one of ours.

And let's all go to the book of Acts, the 24th chapter.

2416.

The Spirit of God through Paul, he said, I exercise myself to have always a conscience void of offense toward God and toward men.

He's talking about his conscience, and he's talking about the condition of his conscience between him and God and the condition of his conscience between him and people.

And he said he exercised himself.

So this is something he had to do to keep his conscience void of offense, clear of offense. It's where we come to this. We are familiar with the phrase a clear conscience. In the NIV, he said, I strive always to keep my conscience clear before God and man.

Other translations refer to it as a blameless conscience or a clear conscience.

Most folks have not heard enough about the conscience. It's a subject they're ignorant of

at great cost to themselves. Let me just give you a brief example of what I'm talking about.

You'll hear Christians just all too often. something happened, a problem, sometimes a tragedy,

sometimes destruction and loss, and time after time.

You'll hear believers say, I knew I shouldn't have done that.

I knew we shouldn't have gone there.

I knew I shouldn't have bought that. I knew we shouldn't have gone there. I knew I shouldn't have bought

that. I knew I shouldn't have gotten involved in that. Well, here's the question. Do you know the

question? If you knew, you shouldn't have done that. Why did you do it? And none of us can throw a rock at the other fellow because every

one of us has ignored something we should have paid attention to. And one problem is the lack

of emphasis on this. We should have learned this from the time we were small children.

Our parents should have taught us.

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