The Importance of Sound Doctrine

‘...teach...sound doctrine.’ Titus 2:1 NIV

Today ‘sound doctrine’ is being replaced by ‘feel good theology,’ and we should be concerned! Pilots fly by fixed laws. Surgeons operate by fixed protocols. Aren’t you glad they think doctrine is important? The story’s told of a psychology student in the army who was given kitchen duty. He decided to test the response of different groups of soldiers to apricots. First he took the negative approach: ‘You don’t want apricots, do you?’ Ninety percent said no. Then he tried the positive approach: ‘You do want apricots, don’t you?’ Over half said yes. With a third group he tried the either/or technique: ‘Would you like one dish of apricots or two?’ In spite of the fact that most of them didn’t like apricots, forty percent took two dishes and fifty percent took one dish. Be careful; when you have no fixed belief system of your own, you’ll fall for somebody else’s. Paul instructed Timothy: ‘Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage-with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.’ (2 Timothy 4:2-4 NIV) When your feelings won’t sustain you, sound doctrine will, for one rests on emotion and the other rests on the eternal Word of God.