The Bible: Living By God's Word

Welcome! Today we look at a tremendously important topic: what it means to live by God’s Word, the Bible. Because this is part of our series called Sound Doctrine, I want to start by talking about what theologians call the necessity and sufficiency of Scripture, and then we will talk about some practical principles and steps towards growing in the process of living by God’s Word.

So let’s start with the necessity of Scripture. In what sense is Scripture “necessary”? What does this mean? Well, one sense is in knowledge of the gospel, the good news that Christ died to save sinners, and that by believing in Him, in trusting Him, we can be forgiven and reconciled to God and experience eternal life with Him. I think of what Paul writes in Romans 10:

If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. As Scripture says, “Anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame.” For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” – Romans 10:9-13 

The Bible: The Nature of God's Word

Last week, Carl launched us into a new series entitled Sound Doctrine.  Our foundation verse for this series is Titus 2:1, 

You, however, must teach what is appropriate to sound doctrine. 

He explained that doctrine is teaching, and, Biblical teaching or doctrine is both practical, applicable, and includes the theology behind it.

The basis of what we teach is critical.  If we have the wrong foundation behind what we teach, it is worthless.

Jesus quoted the book Isaiah, saying, 

“… you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition.  You hypocrites!  Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: “‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings [doctrines] are but rules taught by men.’”

Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen and understand. What goes into a man’s mouth does not make him ‘unclean,’ but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him ‘unclean.’”  --Matthew 15:6-11 

According to Jesus, wrong teaching or teaching things contradictory to what the Bible says makes our worship vain, without purpose, worthless.

The Bible: Introduction

Welcome to our new series, Sound Doctrine! What is a doctrine? In English, the word “doctrine” comes from the Latin word docere, which means “to teach,” and this word leads to doctor, which means “teacher,” and this word in turn leads to doctrina, which means “teaching.” In the context of Christianity, a doctrine is a teaching of what the Bible has to say about a particular topic. 

The title of our series alludes to Titus 2:1, which says,

You, however, must teach what is appropriate to sound doctrine. – Titus 2:1

To understand the “however” in this verse we need to look back in chapter 1. Here we find the following:

For there are many rebellious people, full of meaningless talk and deception, especially those of the circumcision group. They must be silenced, because they are disrupting whole households by teaching things they ought not to teach—and that for the sake of dishonest gain. – Titus 1:10-11