Understanding Doctrine

➡ Paul, the voice-over for a ministry called Your Daily Bread, emphasizes the importance of understanding doctrine in Christianity. He argues that actions and duties in Christian life are based on doctrine, and without understanding it, people may perform actions without knowing why. He criticizes those who focus on emotionalism or legalism without teaching the theological reasons behind actions. Paul believes that teaching the truth of the Word of God and allowing individuals to choose obedience is the key to Christian living.

Hello. My name is Paul, and I am the voice-over for a ministry provided to you by Jim Pugh at God is Government, called Your Daily Bread, taken from Christ’s teaching of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6, verse 11. This is a daily devotion ministry focused not only on upper uplifting Scripture, but Scripture that will grow your spiritual connection with Christ. We hope that you receive these devotions to uplift you, encourage you, but most importantly, advance your knowledge base of the Holy Scriptures. Today’s focus discussion will be on understanding doctrine. You know, pastors and teachers weaken the Word of God when they come to people and exhort them about duty, and they’ve never taught them doctrine because they suck the motive out, they’ve removed the principle.

Well, let me illustrate it this way. We’ll assume this. You all drive 55 miles an hour. I say we’ll assume that. Why do you drive 55 miles an hour? You don’t say, well, you know, I was just praying about it one day, and it seemed to be right to just drive 55 miles an hour. So I’ve just decided I’ll do that. No, the reason you drive 55 miles an hour is because there is doctrine, and that doctrine says you will drive 55 miles an hour. Your duty is predicated on that doctrine.

Around the 1st of April, you don’t say to your wife, honey, I wouldn’t it let’s send a large check this year to the government. They’ve done so much for us, the lovely parks that we enjoy, the highways upon which we take our vacation, the wonderful programs they have to provide for needy. This government is so great. Let’s just let several thousand dollars. In fact, let’s borrow to do it, honey, because I just I feel there’s something in me that wants to do this. No, the reason you send that in there is because there is a doctrine that says you’re going to send it.

That’s one of the rules. And that’s the way it is in the Christian life. You don’t arbitrarily do things. And unless people know the reason, you have a hard time getting them to make a commitment to the duty, you understand. And so what happens is you can become a sort of a sort of theological, not really a theological, but a sort of a Christian cheerleader. And you get everybody in there and you get them all committed to doing stuff. And they haven’t got the faintest idea why, unless you teach them doctrine.

You know, even when we’re on the radio, we have our radio program now, and the Lord is really blessing. It’s really exciting. We get great mail, people are coming to Christ and it’s just really great. I got a letter from a guy the other day who was very upset at me teaching doctrine. Boy, he was really, he was rip snorting mad, two pages worth, single spaced, typed, and he let it all fly about. He was angry at my doctrine. You’re just regurgitating a bunch of lousy theology. He went on and on.

And boy, he let me have it from front to back. And he was a minister. But he went on. And at the very end, his last line was, please excuse the typographical mistakes. At least I won’t be held accountable for these in that day. And then he signed his name. Well, the Lord used that, and I’m thankful the Lord allowed that to come, because the Lord reminded me that I will be accountable. James 3-1 says, stop being so many teachers, for theirs is the greater condemnation. And you know what I’ll be accountable for? The Lord’s only going to ask me one thing.

Did you dispense to my people my truth? Isn’t that right? That’s all. And I just, I want to discharge my ministry to the full and discharging my ministry to the full means that I must teach you the principles of the Word of God. Now, first, I got to get you here to get you to listen. And then I got to convince you that you ought to operate on those things. That’s God’s calling to me. I’m not interested in getting you to conform legalistically. I’m not interested in getting you to conform emotionally. I’m not interested in intimidating you into that.

I feel that my responsibility is to give you the truth of the Word of God and to allow you the responsibility to obey it or not obey it. And I think if we just get in the pulpit and just try to whip people into emotionalism, or we just tell them to do things all the time without giving them a theological reason for doing it, we leave them empty and we miss the point. Doctrine, people, is the key to Christian living. People today say, well, we just want to love everybody and we don’t want to make doctrine an issue.

That is the dumbest statement. You know, in fact, down the street, down Roscoe Boulevard, about at Haskell, there’s a little green church with no sign on it. That is the church of LA. By that, they called it that because years ago, Watchman Nee wrote that each, according to the New Testament, every city had one church. So that should be still true. And a guy named Witness Lee picked this up and started a movement out of it. And they say there should be only one church in each city. The church of Los Angeles, the church of San Francisco, the church of Pittsburgh.

You know what I mean? That approach. And, of course, since they have several branches, they all call themselves the church of LA, even though it’s in Sepulveda. I don’t know how that works with their theology, but that’s what it is. Anyway, it’s called the church of LA. Well, the book that spawned this movement is written by a man named Witness Lee, and the title of the book is Christ vs. Doctrine, that’s the title of the book. I read the book, and in it he says, Christ is against all doctrine. They do not believe in doctrine.

And that, of course, is one of their cardinal doctrines. The word doctrine simply means principles. One of their principles is not to believe in principles. You can’t say, and then you have everyone today who comes sort of on the borderline of liberalism and saying, we’ve got to forget theology and just set it aside and just, we just have to love everybody. And let’s not talk about theology. We’ll just all get together on the basis of love. It’s a wonderful thought. It’s just not biblical. Let me show you some verses. Ephesians 4, 23. You know, I’ve been reading a lot in the last few years about church renewal, and there’s a lot of books coming out on church renewal.

Some of them are good and helpful, and I’ve appreciated them very much. But in all of the talk about church renewal, it’s kind of interesting because there’s a lot of suggestions about how to get the church renewed. We’ve got to renew the church. Renewal is sort of the new word, see? And there are suggestions. The way to renew the church is to change the structure. We’ve got to kick against the traces. We’ve got to get rid of all the old patterns. Dump this. Get rid of that. We’ve got to do it in small groups.

We’ve got to have little groups of interaction and sharing. We’ve got to have it oriented this way. And we’ve got to do it this way. And we’ve got to rearrange the furniture and make people face each other. And we’ve got to get people to spill out their problems to each other. And we’ve got methods and manners and solutions. And a lot of it is very kind of exterior and superficial. Some of it is more deep and meaningful. But they’re all suggestions of the new methodology for renewal. There’s no methods for it. New ways to do it.

Well, you know something? You can do that till you’re purple. You can reorganize the church every six months for the rest of your life and never know renewal. You can change the furniture all you want. You know, the first principle of Christian education. Move the chairs. You can do that as much as you want. You can reorganize and restructure and reset and change the format and the methods and the plans and the programs till you die and never have renewal. Because Ephesians 4.23 says, you are renewed in the spirit of your, what, your mind.

If the church really wants renewal, it’ll find renewal when it imparts to the people of God, the truth of God, so that their minds can know it. That’s the basis of renewal. And then, frankly, it matters little how you arrange the furniture or what method you use, because you’ve got a whole lot of renewed people. And renewed people are going to carry on the work of the Lord in whatever way. But notice it is the mind that is the source of renewal. The renewal that comes to the church comes in the mind, the thinking process.

That’s why, in Ephesians 1.17, the apostle said that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Glory, would give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened. In other words, God knows that the heart of the matter is to know His truth in your mind. We must know doctrine, beloved, before we can ever know duty. Philippians, again, chapter 1, verse 9. I just want to make this point solid this morning. And here’s a verse that I hear a lot, but a lot of times people don’t quote the whole verse.

And this I pray that your love may abound yet more and more. And then they stop there. They say, oh, yes, we must love more and more. And we’ve got to forget about all of these things about doctrine. But you didn’t read the verse. It says, I pray that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment, that you may test things that are excellent. See, you’ve got to be discerning. You’ve got to make judgments. You’ve got to know doctrine and theology, or your love is less than God’s love, which is discerning, knowledgeable, makes judgments.

Thank you for joining us in this exploration of understanding doctrine. Until next time, remember to keep the faith, stay strong, and continue to shine your light in the world. To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddessgovernment.com. Goodbye, and may your faith always lead the way. [tr:trw].