A Tender Conscience

N. Hunter Strength

The Beacon Pulpit

June 1st, 2025

Cultivating a Tender Conscience

            Before I came to Beacon, I worked temporarily as a route driver. Each route driver’s box truck was equipped with a system that tracked our speed and location and would beep if the driver got too close to the middle lane or shoulder. One day, I was asked to help another driver, and while riding with him, I noticed that he drove unusually fast and that I never heard a beep from his system. When I asked him about this, he told me that he found out how to unplug the system. In essence, he wanted to get rid of the one thing stopping him from behaving in a way that would get him in trouble with the admin.

            This isn’t unusual, not for route drivers, and not for human beings in general. In Romans 1-2, we are told that God has given all people moral governors, which we call our conscience. These consciences, according to Paul, are God’s way of restraining evil in us as our consciences remind us of His law, which He has placed on our minds. The thing is, we can sear our consciences. When we do this, we choose sinful rebellion against God, and He allows us to have what we want and hardens us to His voice.

            As we turn to 1 Samuel 24 today, we find ourselves near the climax of the David/Saul controversy. In summary, Saul has rebelled against the Lord by disobeying God’s order to kill the Amalekites and leave their spoils. In response to this disobedience, God sends Samuel in 1 Samuel 15, who informs Saul that his rebellion has forfeited his place as King, and so, God would send Samuel to anoint another. Fast forwarding to 1 Samuel 24, Saul now knows that David is that man and has found himself convinced that David is his enemy whom he must kill to hold on to everything he believes belongs to him.  Throughout this drama, Saul nearly captures David time and again; however, David always escapes. In this chapter, Saul, on David’s scent again, temporarily pauses his army of 3,000 men to use the restroom in a cave. This cave, unbeknownst to Saul, is where David and his men are hiding.

            As we look at David’s encounter with Saul today, we will learn that a tender conscience, informed by God’s word and resigned to God’s will, leads us to a life of integrity and trust in God’s providence. Furthermore, as we look at Saul’s life, we will find a warning against the dangers of a seared conscience that rejects God’s word. As we examine this passage, I pray that we will find ourselves inspired to nurture a tender conscience toward the things of God through a steady diet of God’s word, prayer, repentance, and rest in God’s way. As we seek to cultivate a tender conscience today, I want to see:

1. A Tender Conscience is an Informed Conscience.

As Saul slips into this cave, David’s men cannot believe their eyes. The man who has hunted them like a beagle on a rabbit's trail has just wandered right into their presence – and he’s vulnerable. These men know two things: First, if David wins this power struggle, we’re safe. Second, if David loses this power struggle, all of us and our families will die. With that in mind, it’s easy to understand why they look at David in verse 4 and aim to persuade David to recognize this as a God given opportunity to end the war. However, as David sneaks up on Saul, instead of cutting his head off, he sneakily cuts the corner of his robe off, and when he does this, the Spirit nails David with overwhelming conviction.

A. Before we get into the reason David is so convicted, I want us to be reminded that we need to be on guard against bad counsel.

David’s men say all the things we usually look for in counsel as good, reformed Christians: they try to apply Scripture, and they reference God’s sovereignty. However, not all counsel is good simply because it’s flavored with Christianese. In verse 4, these men are convinced that this is the fulfillment of God’s promise to deliver the enemy into David’s hand. However, the only place that is seen is in 1 Samuel 23:4, where God tells David, “I will deliver the Philistines into your hand.” Now, these guys may have tried to put two and two together by thinking, “Hey, Philistines are our enemies, and Saul is our enemy, so this must be it!” But that is bad counsel, and just like David, we too need to be on guard against bad counsel.

Remember the life of Job? Job was a righteous man and lost everything, and so, he sought comfort in the words of his friends. Well, here they come, and Eliphaz has all the right words to say, doesn’t he? Through the whole book, he is committed to informing Job that the reason his life is in shambles is because Job is a wicked and prideful man who simply needs to repent to get things back in order. Well, what does God do when He visits Job? He rebukes Eliphaz for misrepresenting Him before Job. Better yet, remember the temptation of Jesus? The Lord has fasted for 40 days, and here comes Satan quoting Scripture and misapplying it as an attempt to ensnare the Lord. Yes, Proverbs is right in telling us that there is wisdom in the counsel of many. However, the only place where there is perfect wisdom for us is in God’s word. Which leads me to our next subpoint:

B. Be transformed by God’s word.

In Romans 12:1-2, Paul calls us to be not conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. The way that our minds are renewed day by day is through a steady diet of God’s word. Well, as David cuts Saul’s robe, he is reminded that you are not to raise your hand against God’s anointed. He may remember stories such as Numbers 16, where God caused an earthquake to swallow Korah, Dathan, and Abiram for raising a rebellion against Moses. But as I read this, I found myself thinking, “David, of all the things to feel bad for, I’d feel pretty good about how you handled this situation. I mean, you cut his robe when you had a chance to cut his head off!” However, as I looked into it more, I think I understand David a little more. You see, David’s conscience is pricked because he just rendered Saul out of compliance with the Law. In Deuteronomy 22, God commands Israel to wear tassels on the corners of their robes to remind them of their calling to obey God’s commands. Furthermore, Saul’s robe is the primary way he is identified as King. So, by cutting his robe and making it unwearable, David has symbolically rendered Saul’s rule invalid. Or, to put it simply, he has raised his hand against God’s anointed.

You see, there is a lot to learn from this. David could’ve soothed his conscience and said, “Hey, I could’ve done a lot worse!” David could’ve seared his conscience and decided to go with the crowd and kill King Saul, but he didn’t. It seems that David is behaving unusually to us, until we understand that this is a man who was steeped in God’s word and sensitive to how his life lined up with it. Beloved, we are called to consume God’s word and to obey His commands. However, we cannot obey what we don’t know. So, this is a great reminder for us that a tender conscience is an informed conscience.

I want to give a bit of counsel for those of us dealing with loved ones with tender consciences. We need to be extremely careful with the counsel we give to those who come to us with pricked consciences. You see, God uses a wounded conscience to drive us to Himself as we are convicted of our sin. The only true balm to a wounded conscience, grieved by sin, is the gospel. So, when we are about to counsel someone, we need to ask ourselves, “Is the counsel I’m about to give going to point them to Jesus, or soothe them in their sin?” The good news people need in times like these isn’t “Give yourself some slack, man.” Rather, it’s “Look to the Lord who gives grace to wounded sinners.”

2. A Tender Conscience is a Resigned Conscience.

As Saul makes his way out of the cave, David quickly comes out behind him and uses this as an opportunity to plead his case and to calm down the king. If we have time, I plan to come back to the way in which David approaches Saul. But for now, I want us to notice the wisdom that David displays in verses 12-15 as he completely rests in the Lord to sort all of this out. David isn’t interested in taking this into his own hands; he’s not going to kill the King and be guilty, and he’s not interested in winning a debate. Instead, having been convicted of trying to take matters into his hands in that cave, David displays a repentant heart and is resigned to God’s will.

There are perhaps no greater times for a Christian to look like Christ than when we have a chance to take matters into our own hands and choose to rest in God’s will instead. When Jesus was in the wilderness, Satan tempted Him to skip the cross and inherit the world now if Jesus would simply bow the knee, but Jesus trusted in the Father’s will. When Pilate stood before the Lord and interrogated Him, he told the Lord that it might be wise to speak up because he’s the man who has the power of life or death in his hands. And what does Jesus say? You’d have no power at all if it were not given to you from above.

Peter picks up on this in 1 Peter 2:18-25 and applies it to slaves with wicked masters. As Peter thinks on the Lord’s patient suffering, Peter encourages those suffering unjustly to do good and suffer well, knowing that God is glorified as we suffer faithfully like the Lord did. Suffering isn’t easy, and it’s hard to make it attractive during the time it’s happening, isn’t it? I think that this text still offers us some comfort. You see, in 1 Samuel 15, Saul tears Samuel’s robe and Samuel responds, “So too has the Lord torn the kingdom of Israel from you today, and has given it to a neighbor of yours, who is better than you.” In our text today, Saul remembers that when David shows him the torn piece of his own robe and in verse 20, he tells David, “You shall surely be king!” With that in mind, I want you to look at John 19:17-24 with me. When we look at Saul, the sinful king of Israel, his torn robe symbolizes the throne being torn from his hand. But, as Daly-Denton puts it, when we look at the untorn robe of our Lord, we can’t help but be reminded that this is David’s Son who will reign without end.  Why can we suffer unjustly here and now? Why is there hope? Because we are joint-heirs with Jesus, the King of a Kingdom without end.

So, beloved, as your conscience convicts you when you’re in the middle of sinning against the Lord. Rest in His grace, repent, and be reminded that we resign our wills to a good and gracious King. Before we move on to look at the dangers of a seared conscience, I want to quickly look at cultivating a tender conscience.

3. A Tender Conscience is a Cultivated Conscience

How can we cultivate a tender conscience? A reality that we must accept is that if we are not actively seeking to cultivate and maintain a tender conscience, then we are sliding towards a hardened conscience. This is why Paul speaks of it as a striving work in Acts 24. If that’s the case, then how do we nurture a tender conscience? Let me give four things from the Scriptures.

First, by contemplating the resurrection. In Acts 24:15-16, Paul says, “I have hope in God, which they (Jews) themselves also accept, that there will be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and the unjust. This being so, I myself also strive to have a conscience without offense toward God and men.” When we have eternity in mind, we will cultivate a heavenly mindset and a conscience that is tender towards worldliness. This doesn’t mean that we’re trying to prepare ourselves for that day as though we’re earning salvation. No, our sins have already been dealt with. Instead, we need to have that day in mind because nothing done for the Lord is in vain and will be rewarded on that day.

Second, by consuming the word. We have already addressed this, but in passing, I will say that if we are seeking to cultivate a tender conscience, we must stop grieving it by consuming wicked content like Lot in Sodom.

Third, call on God to search your heart. In Psalm 139:23, the Psalmist cries out for God to search him and reveal indwelling sin. One of the reasons that we call on God to show us our sins and feel like He doesn’t do that is because we refuse to confess the pet sin He’s been revealing to us for years.

Fourth, 1 John 1:9 calls us to confess the sin in our lives. Keep a short account with sin. Regularly bring them before the Lord, confess them, and repent of them while trusting in His sufficient grace. Many Christians allow too much time to pass before going to the Lord to confess their sins because Satan has convinced them they can’t go before Him like they are right now, so we go and try to earn our way back into His presence, but that’s not the gospel. Instead, He invites us to Himself to confess our sinfulness, to receive grace, and to restore fellowship.

Finally, let’s move on to consider the warning seen in Saul, which is:

4. A Seared Conscience and False Repentance

Illustration: In 1983, a flight from Frankfurt, Germany to Bogota, Colombia, crashed into three mountains, killing all 181 people on board. When the black box was recovered, the tape revealed that the computer system responded to the low altitude at which the pilot was flying. As you listen to the system yelling, “Pull Up, Pull Up, Pull Up…” You finally hear the pilot scream, “Shut up!” as he kills the system, thinking it was faulty. By ignoring that warning, he suffered a horrible fate and killed everyone on board.

When we sear our consciences, we numb them to the pain of rebellion against God and set ourselves on course for catastrophe. This is what we see in the life of Saul, first, in his futile rejection of God’s Word, and second, in his false repentance. When Saul is confronted by Samuel in 1 Samuel 15, Saul refuses to accept this fate and begins to descend into madness as he fights to retain his kingdom. The king who once stood in honor and power is now known as a prideful and rebellious king whose rule ended in shame. Proverbs 29:1 says, “He who is often rebuked, and hardens his neck, will suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.”

Is there something in God’s Word that has spoken to you, but you refuse to heed its warning? Are you harboring a secret sin, thinking no one will find out? Are you refusing to bow the knee to the one you call Lord and find yourself stiffening up, hoping that nagging feeling will go away? Beloved, I say this with all sincerity, it would be the wrathful judgment of God on you for Him to take that nagging bit away. Please, repent of your rebellion and run to the Lord for grace. Saul thought that he could simply reject the word of the Lord and hold on to everything, but that’s not how it went for him, and that’s not how it’s going to go for us either.

Finally, let’s look at Saul’s false repentance.

When David confronts Saul in this passage, Saul emotionally responds as a broken man. In verses 16-17, we read, “So it was, when David had finished speaking these words to Saul, that Saul said, 'Is this your voice, my son David?” And Saul lifted up his voice and wept. Then he said to David: “You are more righteous than I; for you have rewarded me with good, whereas I have rewarded you with evil.”

I want us to dial in on the phrase, “You are more righteous than I…” When Paul says this phrase, he is quoting a saying of Judah from Genesis 38:26. In that story, Judah’s son, Er, marries a girl named Tamar, but he dies, leaving her a widow with no children. Well, eventually Judah promises to give her to his son when he’s of age, but she discovers years later that he never did that. So, Tamar decides to dress up like a harlot and Judah sleeps with her and she conceives a child, not knowing it was her. Months later, when she is in danger of dying for fornication, she reveals that it was Judah who got her pregnant, and he is convicted because he realizes that it was his lying sin that put her in a situation where she was tempted to deceive him like she did. When he repents, he says to her, “You are more righteous than I!” And guess what? We learn that his repentance was genuine because he never touched her again.

Well, when we look at Saul in our text, we see an emotional guy. If we played 6 verses of “Just as I am” and had an altar call, Saul would have probably walked the aisle. But we need to remember that even Esau sought repentance with tears and was denied. Saul’s emotion seemed genuine, but his repentance was a lie because two chapters later, he’s already trying to kill David again.

Of this, a puritan named Timothy Cruso wrote this in his book, The Duties and Blessing of a Tender Conscience, “All sinners are not equally [resistant to authority and correction], but some will lend an attentive ear to serious admonitions, and just when they are instructed, they will smite upon their thigh, but these promising appearances come to nothing. They seem flexible to good, but when the next temptation comes, that consent is withdrawn and revoked. As Saul seemed to be convicted of the innocence of David sometimes, and yet soon after pursued him as a traitor.”

What Timothy is describing here is one of the hardest realities pastors have to come to terms with, which is that not all tears are telling the truth. They might seem genuine, they might cry at the right time, they might say the words you want to hear, but as soon as temptation comes back around, everything they tell you is going out the window. Dr. Jim Newheiser, a counseling professor at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, has a wonderful photo covering 7 signs of true repentance and 7 signs of false repentance. Four of the seven he uses for false repentance come from the life of Saul. They are:

1. Self-Focused

2. Hate the Consequences of Sin

3. Criticize the Disciplinary Process

4. Unchanged Heart with No Fruit

5. Impatiently Demand Trust and Restoration

6. Self-Protective

7. Blame Others for Their Sin

Friend, if this is you, the system is screaming, “Pull up!” Because you’re heading for a catastrophe. You might have your friends fooled, you might have the church and elders fooled, but God isn’t fooled. He sees you actively seeking to sear your conscience, and eventually, He’s going to deliver you up to what you’re asking for, and when He does, He’s going to give you enough rope to hang yourself.  So please, hear what the word of the Lord says, throw yourself on His grace, seriously, and beg Him for strength to repent of your sin and to see it as He does.

Conclusion:

      Well, as we think on 1 Samuel 24 today, the Lord has given us a fresh warning to consider for our lives, and may He apply it to our hearts by His Spirit. For the believer, God invites us to cultivate a tender conscience and sensitive walk with the Spirit, which is supported through prayer, scripture, and actively confessing sin.

      **Check time. If you still have time, talk about David’s respectful engagement with Saul and our engagement with a wicked society. If not, go straight to final applications.**

      For that person whose conscience is plagued with reminders of past sins, Jesus invites you to come to Him for the forgiveness of your sins. Hebrews 9:14 says, “How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offering Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” You don’t have to bear the weight of your sin anymore. You don’t have to find yourself plagued with a wounded conscience. You don’t have to fight to numb it with alcohol, porn, or pills. Christ has come not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

            And for that person who knows this is for them but is actively seeking to shut it out of their mind even now, God is gracious in giving you this warning. He is gracious to give you friends and family who invite you to see your sinfulness. He has been gracious to bear with you this long. But if you continue to harden your heart, He will soon give you the desire of your heart. He will let your sin be your god without any pricking of the conscience. And you will serve those ruthless idols until they usher you into Hell.

            This is the word of God.

Benediction:

Hebrews 13:20-21 (ESV):

“Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.”