20 Oct 2011
Titus 2:1
Titus 2:1: “But speak thou the things which become sound doctrine:”
These days sound doctrine is increasingly hard to come by. I don’t know of an antidote for this, except to say that this really emphasizes the importance of personal Bible study. Things have become so bad that you’re probably not going to hear sound doctrine in church. (For example, just look at all the churches that have no problem ordaining homosexuals to the ministry – or the pastors that preach that there is no Hell! This isn’t fringe activity; it’s actually becoming mainstream. According to polling data the majority of churches no longer believe that you need Jesus to go to Heaven. That is not “sound doctrine” – that is doctrine from the pits of Hell.) What this means is that if you want to learn what the Bible actually teaches then you are really on your own.
Of course, a great many Christians have owned Bibles their entire lives and yet have never gotten around to actually reading the entire Bible. Yet this is so important: how can you know what the Bible teaches if you’ve never read it? It’s not that hard to read the Bible; it definitely is a long book, but if you read three chapters a day you can have the whole thing read in just one year. Or, if that’s too much, you can read just one chapter a day and have it finished in three years. God spent thousands of years writing the Bible, and countless people died to make it happen; is setting aside a few minutes to read it really that much to ask?
Personal Bible study is absolutely critical. If we spend a lot of time in the Word then we’ll know what the truth actually is – and we’ll be able to spot false doctrine a mile away.