Train Your Conscience Series

In Romans 2:15 we read, “They know what is right and wrong, for their conscience validates this “law” in their heart” (TPT)

Conscience is that inner voice that God has placed within each one of us, for internal judgement. Our conscience is what cautions us, even before we do something wrong, it bothers us when we are doing the wrong thing, and convicts us even after the deed is done.

Those who work in an office set up will understand the whole process of internal and external audits that are conducted once or twice a year. The purpose of the internal audits is to assess if the income and expense of the department was spent right, so that there will be no issues raised when it’s time for the external audit. The Bible also talks about a day of reckoning, when all of us will have to stand before God, who will judge us. That final judgement day can be equated to the external audit and our conscience to the internal audit. If we develop a healthy conscience by obeying the voice of God daily, we can stand without fear before God, on that final judgement day.

How David’s conscience got weakened

We looked at 2 incidents from David’s life in the previous chapter.

In 1 Samuel 24:5, we read, “But then David's conscience began bothering him because he had cut Saul's robe.” (NLT)

We read in 2 Samuel 24:10, “But after he had taken the census, David's conscience began to bother him. And he said to the LORD, "I have sinned greatly by taking this census. Please forgive my guilt, LORD, for doing this foolish thing." (NLT)

The first incident is one where David cut off a part of King Saul’s robe, and immediately he was filled with deep sense of grief and remorse for doing so, because his conscience started to bother him. The second event was when David decided to take a census to count the number of people in his kingdom, which again greatly troubled David’s conscience because instead of trusting in the Lord who had been his strength, gradually David started to depend of the number of people under his rule and the strength of his armies.

Here is an important lesson for us to learn from the life of David, that regardless of how much we may rise in our position or status, our trust and dependence must be on God alone. Our trust and confidence must never move to our abilities, talents, wealth or position, because God alone is our security and our sure foundation.

David defeats the Syrians

In 2 Samuel 10:18 we read, “And the Israelites drove the Syrian army back. David and his men killed seven hundred Syrian chariot drivers and forty thousand cavalry, and they wounded Shobach, the enemy commander, who died on the battlefield.” (GNB)

When David, the man of war, went to war with the Syrians, he had with him a great army, the most efficient commanders and he went with them personally to war. God granted the Israelites an astounding victory over the Syrians.

When David’s feet strayed away from God

In the very next chapter we read, 2 Samuel 11:1, “The following spring, at the time of the year when kings usually go to war, David sent out Joab with his officers and the Israelite army; they defeated the Ammonites and besieged the city of Rabbah. But David himself stayed in Jerusalem.”(GNB)

The next year however, when the army of Israel went to war, in a season when David as King of Israel should have gone to war, he abdicated his responsibilities to his commander Joab and decided to stay back in his palace in Jerusalem.

2 Samuel 11:2, “One day, late in the afternoon, David got up from his nap and went to the palace roof. As he walked around up there, he saw a woman taking a bath in her house. She was very beautiful.” (GNB)

It started off when David who should have been fighting along with his army, took a casual walk on his terrace, after a nap. In his moment of idleness, David’s eyes moved away from the Lord who bestowed on him his throne and all that he possessed. He looked on with lust at a woman who was bathing, saw that she was beautiful and desiring to have her, called for her to be brought to his palace and committed adultery with her. The beautiful woman was Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, an ardent soldier in David’s army.

Not only did David commit adultery, but once he knew that Bathsheba got pregnant he quickly conspired to cover his tracks. He called her husband Uriah back from battle, and forced him to go to Bathsheba, so it would appear that the child was not his but Uriah’s. When Uriah being an upright man and a faithful soldier refused to do so, David intoxicated him with drink and sent him back to Bathsheba. Nothing could deter Uriah from his resolve to stay patriotic to King David and the men who were fighting on Israel’s behalf. Though Uriah was only a subject of King David, he knew exactly where he ought to be and nothing could avert him from his firm position. While David’s feet strayed from the right path, Uriah’s was firmly set and in the rightful place.