Posted on 12/27/2022 9:25:16 PM PST by Pilgrim's Progress
“The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are bold as a lion” (Proverbs 28:1).
The saying goes, “Conscience makes cowards of us all.” Right? You have Joseph's brethren in Egypt and for all those years they have had it on the back of their conscience this dark mark of where they knew full well that they sold their brother Joseph into slavery. In their minds, of course, he's dead and they told their father that a lion killed him. Well, one day they show up in Egypt during a drought and there is Joseph and so, all this stuff comes spewing out. So, as the story goes:
“And when Joseph's brethren saw that their father was dead, they said, Joseph will peradventure hate us, and will certainly requite us all the evil which we did unto him. And they sent a messenger unto Joseph, saying, Thy father did command before he died, saying, So shall ye say unto Joseph, Forgive, I pray thee now, the trespass of thy brethren, and their sin; for they did unto thee evil: and now, we pray thee, forgive the trespass of the servants of the God of thy father. And Joseph wept when they spake unto him. And his brethren also went and fell down before his face; and they said, Behold, we be thy servants. And Joseph said unto them, Fear not: for am I in the place of God? But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive” (Genesis 50:15-20).
So, after Jacob died the brethren come forward and said to Joseph, “Before dad died, he wanted us to make sure to tell you that he didn't want you to beat up on us.” Why? Because, “The wicked flee when no man pursueth.” How many of us have ever suffered from a really guilty conscience? Maybe we operated for perhaps it could be days, it could be weeks, it could be years for that matter; but you've operated for some time with the guilt. Perhaps we were kind of paranoid because we were stuck back there with this thing that we did that was wrong and were afraid of being found out. Well, “The wicked flee when no man pursueth.”
Another saying goes, “None are so brave as the anonymous.” and maybe even better, “conscience is the root of all courage.” Think about that one. If conscience makes cowards of us all, if “the wicked flee when no man pursueth,” that means that conscience is the root of all real courage. There is nothing as hard is trying to stand firm when you feel guilty about something. If you have wronged somebody, and then somehow things come full circle, and you are forced to make a stand contrary to them; it is hard, because you have a guilty conscience.
Conscience is the root of all real courage. “the wicked flee when no man pursueth, but the righteous are bold as a lion.” That was the mark of the Apostles in Acts 4, “Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus” (vs. 13).
The outstanding thing was that they were bold, and they turned the world on its ear. they turned the world upside down by just a few of. Right? Because they knew they were right. It is hard to keep a man down that knows he's right. He's not a cowed. He's not he's not intimidated, because he knows that he is right, and he doesn't have a guilty conscience.
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