Doctrine Shapes Your Life - Myles Holmes | January 11, 2026

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church Podcast.

We're a church in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada that exists to glorify God through the fulfillment of the Great Commission and the spirit of the Great Commandment.

Thanks for joining us today.

If you have a copy of God's Word, you can take it out and open it up to 1 Timothy chapter 1.

1 Timothy 1 · chapter mention

We're going to begin our time in verses 3 to 5 this morning.

If you don't have a copy of God's Word, the ushers are making their way to the front.

You can just slip your hand in the air.

They'd love to get a copy into your hands.

We believe God wrote a book, and so we study it every week.

And we would love for you to keep this book for yourself and read it for yourself.

You'll notice behind me on the screen that we are starting a new series.

And the series is called, you'll never believe this, Doctrine Matters.

And I love our graphic team because I love this graphic.

If you read once that doctrine matters, five more times you can read it, doctrine matters, and that's what we want to impress on our heart over these next three weeks before getting back into the Gospel of John.

And yet I wonder, as you read those words, doctrine matters, I wonder what comes into your mind.

For most of us, doctrine doesn't feel very connected to everyday life.

And maybe for some of us, you know, there's that kind of like this tension that's building up in us because doctrine has only ever led to debates in our lives, it's only ever led to division.

And if it's ever served a purpose in your life, maybe the purpose it's served is you know, you have one big, dense theology book that you put on the coffee table for when you know your Christian friends come over, you can impress them.

And the reality is you've never made it past the foreword, but this book looks, you know, big and meaty.

Because of that, both the church and our wider culture have been willing, if not to abandon doctrine altogether, then at least to put it on the back burner in favor of something we think maybe is better.

The church has often looked at doctrine and said, well, give us something practical, give us something life-changing.

The culture has increasingly abandoned doctrine altogether and said that the most important thing isn't truth at all, it is your truth, being true to yourself, living out what you believe to be true.

And beneath both of these is a shared suspicion that doctrine is rigid, that doctrine is judgmental, that doctrine is too law-based, that to devote yourself to a deep doctrine of God would be to devote yourself to the opposite of freedom.

And what I find fascinating about all of these views of doctrine is that in reality, if we were to just take a step back for a moment, those statements that are doctrines in and of themselves.

Would you say that?

Would you say that if you say I don't need doctrine, just give me what works, you've made a doctrinal statement about doctrine.

If you say I don't need doctrine, that would only stifle freedom, you have made a doctrine about doctrine.

And what the Bible does is it presents a surprising alternative.

It gives us a doctrine about doctrine, but it tells us that doctrine is already shaping every single one of us.

That whether you like it or not, you have a doctrine of God, you have thoughts about God, and these doctrines matter.

That's why we're beginning this series, doctrine matters.

That's why we're starting right here with this simple truth that doctrine matters because doctrine shapes your life.

Doctrine shapes your life.

Paul believed that deeply.

That's why when he wrote to Timothy and Titus, young pastors who were in the trenches shepherding real people, he returns in those letters again and again to this single word, doctrine.

Because Paul understood as as he shepherded these pastors, as he was a pastor to pastors, he understood that in if people are going to become like Jesus, doctrine matters.

And loved ones, so it is for you.

If you are going to become like Jesus, doctrine matters.

And my prayer for you this morning, my prayer for us this morning, and over these next three weeks is that you would see doctrine not as a burden, but as a gift from God that is meant to form you in the likeness of Jesus Christ.

So over these next three weeks, we're gonna be looking at selected scriptures in 1st and 2nd Timothy and Titus.

And we're gonna, you know, if your fingers are cold right now, maybe warm them up, maybe crack them a little bit, because we're gonna be flipping through scripture and getting a sweat on here to look at what Paul teaches us about doctrine in what we call the pastoral epistles.

And this morning we're gonna see that doctrine matters because it shapes our lives.

It shapes our lives in three important ways.

I want you to know that doctrine shapes your life because it aims you, it forms you, and it orders your life.

I want you to see first in 1 Timothy chapter 1, verses 3 to 5, that doctrine shapes my life by aiming my loves.

1 Timothy 1:3–5

Let's look at this together.

Paul writes this in 1 Timothy verses 3 to 5.

As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain peoples, persons not to teach any different doctrine, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith.

The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.

Paul begins this letter right off the bat in his first letter to Timothy with urgency.

Now, Paul doesn't necessarily enjoy correction, but what we'll find throughout these letters is that something precious is at stake.

And so he in verse 3 urges Timothy to charge certain people not to teach any different doctrine.

I want you to notice why Paul says this.

Paul is telling you and I this that doctrine, whether we think about it often or not, whether we have a deep good doctrine or not, doctrine is always aiming us somewhere.

It is never neutral.

Doctrine that is sound, Paul says, aims the heart toward love.

Doctrine that is distorted ain't redirects the heart elsewhere.

That's why, loved one, doctrine shapes the way you live.

It aims your love.

Which means that for you and I, the issue isn't either between no doctrine or doctrine, whether we're a theologian or not a theologian.

In one sense, Paul is looking at you and me.

He's looking at the person sitting beside you and saying this: You have doctrine.

You are a theologian.

One theologian, R.C.

Sproul, says it so bluntly in his book, Everyone's a Theologian.

He says, no Christian can avoid theology.

Every Christian is a theologian.

Perhaps not a theologian in the technical or professional sense, but a theologian nevertheless.

The issue for Christians is not whether we are going to be theologians, but whether we are going to be good theologians or bad ones.

Paul here would say the same thing.

The question is not whether doctrine is shaping you or not.

The question is which doctrine is shaping you and where is it aiming your loves?

Loved one, doctrine shapes you.

Do you know what doctrine is shaping you?

Do you have an understanding of the doctrine which you believe and the way that that is directing your loves?

Now, the most honest way to answer that question is not by looking at what you say you believe.

The most honest way that you can understand what your actual doctrine is is by looking at how you actually live.

I mean, you don't actually really even know what doctrine is inside of you until life gets hard, right?

It is easy to say that you believe in a doctrine of God's sovereignty.

Oh, you know, God is in control until the kids stop following the Lord.

It's easy to say God's in control when your health is intact.

It's easy to say God is in control when your finances are good in order.

It's easy to say that you believe in a doctrine of salvation, that you understand that grace, that faith is by grace through faith.

Salvation is by grace through faith.

It's easy to say that when your conscience is clean.

It's easy to say that when your sin feels small, but when you're confronted with the horror of your sin, the reality of your sin, it's a lot harder to believe that.

When life begins to press on you, when life gets hard, that's loved one, isn't that when you know what you actually believe?

When your plans fall apart.

Find out if you really trust in God's sovereignty.

When someone disappoints you, when someone hurts you again, you find out what you believe about grace.

When you fail publicly, and your shame is made known, you find out whether your identity is rooted in Jesus Christ or in your own performance.

That instinctive reach in us, what we run to in those moments, reveals what we love most, and it reveals what doctrine is really shaping us.

In other words, we could say this that your doctrine is not what you confess on Sunday.

It's easy to come and sing the songs.

Your doctrine is what you hold on to on Monday.

It's what you trust.

Now notice again what Paul says in verse five.

The aim of our charge is love.

That word aim is important.

I want you to circle it in your Bibles.

Paul is talking about here a goal.

It is a destination.

It is what doctrine is designed to produce.

Doctrine is meant to change our lives, it is meant to lead us somewhere.

Biblically, doctrine has always been understood this way.

Doctrine is meant to lead to life change.

If it doesn't, Paul is pointing out here that it is not true doctrine.

Paul Tripp puts it this way.

God's plan is for the rain of biblical doctrine to fall on us and change us.

We won't become better renditions of ourselves, but entirely different spiritually.

God uses doctrine as a means to turn angry people into peacemakers, greedy people into givers, demanding people into servants, lustful people into pure people, faithless people into believers, proud people into humble people, rebels into obedient people, and idolaters into worshipers of the one true God.

Paul here is telling us why doctrine exists.

Some of us have thought that doctrine exists to make us sound impressive, so that we can win arguments with our Presbyterian friends or friends from another denomination or friends from another religion.

Paul here is telling us doctrine exists to make us godly.

It is meant to take us somewhere.

Now, for honest, one of the reasons why so many Christians hesitate to go deeper into doctrine is because somewhere along the way they were taught or they maybe concluded that doctrine had no real practical purpose, that it informed the mind, but it didn't really lead the heart anywhere, that it didn't really produce life change.

But Paul would say that's not biblical doctrine at all.

In verse six, notice that his concern is with these different doctrines that have people, he says, swerving from the truth, wandering away into vain discussion.

In other words, the problem isn't that without doctrine they've stopped moving, it's that with wrong doctrine they lose their direction entirely.

They cannot make it to the destination that they are meant to go.

Now, in verse 5, we see the positive of that.

When doctrine is true, when doctrine is rightly taught, it doesn't leave us wandering.

Paul says it aims us, it aims us towards love.

In other words, I want you to notice that it is it is doctrine, it is right doctrine, it is going deep in doctrine that sets the direction of your life.

But without right doctrine, you swerve, you wander.

Now Amber and I have had a great difficulty getting to this building over the last few months, and I need to tell you why.

On Sunday mornings, Amber, you know, typically I'll drive.

On Sunday mornings, Amber will drive in.

I'll read my manuscript to her, which doesn't really help because if it's bad at that point, there's nothing I can do.

But I just that's kind of our that's what we do.

And so she will type in the GPS, ANOVA.

The problem with that is that in September, this building's name changed.

No longer was ANOVA here, they moved to a different location entirely.

And yet, Amber still typed in ANOVA.

So on multiple occasions, not every time, Amber made me make sure I put that in there, not every time, but on multiple occasions in the middle of the drive, I looked up and realized that we are not going the right way.

We're going the wrong way.

I'm looking at the time and it's 10 minutes closer.

I'm thinking, man, we're making it in great time, only to realize the destination was wrong.

The GPS wasn't broken.

The roads were clear.

We just had the wrong destination put into it.

We what we needed wasn't better driving, we needed the right address for 15 Pickering Crescent.

Now, Paul is saying that doctrine works the same way.

You can be sincere about faith, you can be trying to walk in Christ, but if the doctrine you're trusting has the wrong aim, it will slowly and quietly take you somewhere you never intended to go.

That's what Paul means when he says, some have wandered away.

Loved one, this is why doctrine matters.

Because for many of us, what is needed in our faith is not just like an injection of working harder and grit.

What many of us need is to go in the right direction, to be aimed rightly.

And perhaps this morning you are exhausted because you feel like you're driving at 130 kilometers per hour in the Christian life, trying to become godly, trying to grow.

And the issue is that unknowingly you are trusting doctrines that will never take you closer to godliness.

This is why doctrine matters, because doctrine shapes your life.

And if you are unwilling to train yourself to embrace right doctrine, then implicitly your doctrine will aim you at the wrong things, at things like control instead of trust, performance instead of grace, comfort instead of Christ.

Paul says that if the aim is wrong, the result will be wandering, no matter how sincere you are.

Now, loved one, the good news is right here in this passage because when doctrine is true, when it is sound, when it is centered on Christ, it aims us towards love.

And look in verse 5, Paul shows us what those things are: a love that issues from a pure heart.

You see that in verse 5?

A heart that is no longer divided between worldliness and Christ.

It is a pure heart.

It says it issues from a good conscience, a conscience that doesn't need to hide anything, a conscience that doesn't need to prove itself.

It is a good conscience that it is loved when a sincere faith a good job doctrine.

It allows us to simply trust Jesus.

That is where God wants to take you.

That is the design of biblical doctrine.

That is why doctrine matters.

Doctrine shapes your life by aiming at your love.

Now all those things sound good, and certainly if your faith is in Jesus Christ, you want a pure heart, you want a good conscience, you want a sincere faith.

The question is, how do we actually get there?

How does doctrine take us there?

And Paul's answer is not by an overnight change.

It requires training.

That's the second thing I want you to see about doctrine.

That doctrine shapes my life when it forms me, by forming me in godliness.

Flip over a few pages to 1 Timothy chapter 4, verses 6 to 8.

1 Timothy 4:6–8

1 Timothy chapter 4, verses 6 to 8.

1 Timothy 4:6–8

And you'll notice there, you could study this more at another time, that Paul is still talking about truth.

I mean, it's because doctrine matters, right?

Have we said it before?

I mean, is the graphic big enough?

Doctrine matters, Paul says.

And first four chapters, he's still talking about doctrine.

To Timothy, he's saying, listen, the church has no life apart from doctrine.

And so make sure that doctrine is right.

It matters.

But here, Paul is answering a critically important question.

How does doctrine actually shape a life?

Notice what he says in verses 6 to 8 of chapter 4 in 1 Timothy.

If you put these things before the brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus and all God's people.

Say, I want that.

I want to be a good servant.

Notice, loved one, being trained in the words of faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed.

Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths, rather, train Yourself for godliness.

For while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.

Notice that Paul assumes something about godliness, that godliness is not automatic, that it must be formed in us, and he says that by twice bringing up this word train.

How will Timothy be a good servant of Christ Jesus?

It is by being trained in the words of faith and of the good doctrine.

And if he is to continue to be a good servant, then Paul's admonition, the first actually in all of the pastoral epistles, command he gives to Timothy, train yourself for godliness.

Train yourself for godliness.

Paul uses this word twice.

Once to describe what is happening to Timothy, once to command Timothy what he must keep doing.

And he is showing us how Christian growth actually works, how doctrine shapes our life.

This word trained that Paul uses in verse 16, being trained, it means to be nourished, it means to be fed, it means to be brought up.

Paul is telling us that godliness requires nourishment, that it is ongoing, that it is formative, that it is a slow process that requires constant nourishment from God's word.

In fact, the word trained would be used of the way that parents bring up children.

So that the godliness of that Paul is talking about here is much closer to the hard endurance that's required in raising up children than it is to flipping a switch that will instantaneously make us godly.

Parents, we know what this is like.

You cannot shape a kid with one conversation, can you?

If you can, then you need to come up here and run a parents' seminar for us.

Because it takes constant instruction, constant correction, constant reminder.

You need to feel like if you're if you have to say this thing again, you are going to pull your hair out.

And some of you have.

That is parenting.

And if you feel like that, you're not alone.

There's a story about Susanna Wesley, the mother of John Wesley.

One day her husband was watching patiently as Susanna repeated the same instruction to one of their children over and over again.

More than 20 times she repeated it.

Finally, exasperated, the husband said to Susanna, How many times are you going to tell him the same thing?

She replied, If I had stopped at 19, I would have lost all my progress.

It required 20 times.

That's what training is.

Paul says that God's word works in us like that.

We are brought up by it, we are fed by it, we are formed by it.

And I want us just to take a step back to realize that if godliness is going to be formed in our life, this will be the way that it comes about.

It will be slow growth.

Elsewhere, Paul says that we are renewed day by day.

God shapes us through ongoing nourishment.

We know this about physical health, don't we?

I mean, if I were to ask you what you ate last night, most of us, I mean not all of us, because some of our memories are like this, but most of us would be able to say, I ate this.

And if I were to ask you, you know, what did you eat on Wednesday night?

Well, that gets a little bit harder, doesn't it?

But if I were to ask you what you ate two months ago, almost none of us would have the memory to be able to recall that meal.

And yet every one of those meals did exactly the same thing in us.

They nourished us, they brought us to this point.

God's word works the same way.

You are rarely changed by one meal.

You are shaped by what you take in consistently.

This is why many of you have had the experience where you go to a conference and you're all fired up about the Lord and you've had this great meal, and that meal is a great thing.

I mean, we can praise God for the keg, right?

Praise God for the keg, right?

That's a time to say amen, hallelujah.

Praise God for good food.

But the problem is that the drip of nourishment after that, it ceases altogether, and our hearts leave maybe a week later, maybe it takes a month, but we're we're colder still.

You're shaped by what you take in consistently.

And so then the question is, loved one, what has been your intake this week?

What has been feeding your soul this week?

Something, Paul is telling us, something has been nourishing you, something has been shaping you.

And if if it hasn't been the word of God, then it is sobering to know that you have not been standing still.

You are being trained, if not for godliness, Paul says, you are being formed for worldliness.

Every day, every day you are either formed into increasing Christ-likeness or increasing worldliness.

There's no neutral formation.

And in our day and age, I mean that should be terrifying to us.

Every day you and I are being formed by a diet of images, of voices, of arguments, of assumptions.

And in our day, it is more relentless than ever.

We are exposed to more of this diet than I think anyone in the history of humanity has ever been.

There's more content before our eyes.

There are more voices in our ears than ever before.

And as much good as technology has brought into our lives, we need to understand this: that what we consume on our phones and on our TV and on our computer and the ads that we see as we're driving, I mean, so many things that we're consuming, it doesn't just stay in it in or stay outside of you, it forms you, it changes you, it shapes you.

Have you noticed that?

I mean, I don't scroll very often, but when I do, I often leave with sort of this like low-grade anxiety that because of my algorithm, if I don't have like 7% body fat and six-pack abs, I'm nothing.

Any of you guys on that algorithm, too?

It shapes your desires.

No one says it outright, but the message forms you.

And that's how formation works.

It works slowly over time.

And at this point, if we're honest with where we're at, and as God's word confronts us, confronts us, as the Holy Spirit convicts us, this should feel heavy.

There should be a real fear that is driving us to plant our lives firmly on God's word, because if we're not formed by good doctrine, then we're shaped by something else.

Scripture is clear.

That left to itself, it does not form us towards life.

And if that's where this ended, then we would have every reason to be afraid.

But loved one, the gospel.

Do you know that the gospel gives us hope?

And the message of Christianity at this point is hey, listen, you better fix what it's not, you better fix what's forming you, otherwise, God isn't gonna love you.

If that's what's being whispered into your ear at this point, that that is a lie from Satan.

The gospel tells us that God has already done something decisive for us.

That Jesus has come and he lived in the same broken and formative world that we lived in.

In fact, when Jesus came, the very first thing that happened in his ministry was he was led into the wilderness, and there he stood in front of Satan himself.

It wasn't just a social media influencer, it was Satan, and Satan was tempting him as he was alone and hungry and vulnerable, not just with sin, but with these false loves.

Shortcuts to glory, power without obedience to the father's will, identity apart from the father.

But unlike us, what happened in the wilderness was that Jesus did not bend in submission to Satan.

His love was never divided, he was wholly devoted to the Father, never formed by anything but the Father's love and submission to his will.

Until the point that Jesus, according to the will of the Father, in obedience to him, died on the cross.

And he did it for you to release you from the power of captivity, the Prince of the Power of air.

And to defeat finally and forever the powers of darkness that are leading us to eternal death and separation from God.

And what Jesus Christ offers you in the cross is so much more than just forgiveness for the ways that you have been formed in worldliness.

He offers you power for transformation.

So that what is impossible for us by effort is made possible by grace.

We we can be formed in godliness because God already loves us in Christ and his resurrection power by faith is working in us.

So we need to just be absolutely crystal clear.

If the Holy Spirit is working this conviction, you're saying, Yes, I want to be formed by God's word.

Yes, I want to train myself for godliness.

I want you to know that the answer for that is not just sheer effort.

It must depend on grace.

And when it does, it brings all the glory to God.

But the question, it all comes down to this: have you trusted in him?

Have you trusted in him?

Have you trusted in Jesus Christ?

Have you confessed that you could never do this on your own?

You could never release yourself from the bondage of the flesh.

If you have, then from that place of grace and forgiveness, God begins something new.

It is slow, but it is faithful as he forms you by his word day by day into godliness.

And over time, his grace begins to bring order into your life.

That's the third thing I want you to see about doctrine.

Doctrine shapes my life by ordering how I live.

By ordering how I live.

Flip past 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy with me to Titus.

You're gonna keep flipping towards the end of your Bible and you'll find it before Hebrews.

If you've hit Hebrews, you've gone too far.

And in Titus chapter 2, verse 1, listen to what Paul tells another pastor, Titus.

Titus 2:1

But as for you, Titus, Paul says, chapter 2, verse 1, teach what accords with sound doctrine.

But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine.

Notice first the contrast.

Paul has just described false teachers who are corrupting the minds of Titus's church, who are upsetting households, who are spreading confusion everywhere with their false doctrine.

Paul says, but as for you, Titus, do something different.

He is to teach.

He is to teach.

This is why central to our church service and central to the church all throughout its history has been the preaching of the gospel.

It is what is required, it is what is needed for us in order to be directed away from what is false in the world towards what is right.

There is supernatural power given to the preaching of the gospel as Christ has sent his ambassadors to stand on his behalf and preach his gospel to his children.

That is what Titus is commissioned to do, to teach.

But Paul here assumes something about teaching that you cannot teach what is not already present in you.

Teach what accords with sound doctrine, that there must be a doctrine, a sound doctrine, that is, that Titus believes that he knows, that he then pulls from to teach.

And that is so practical for us.

That you cannot live according to sound doctrine if sound doctrine is not already present in you.

Teaching, it requires that truth is near at hand, that it lives in the mind, that it is ready to be spoken, applied, and shared.

It means that it must be present.

We're getting incredibly practical here.

I want to ask you three questions in this point, okay?

And if you're taking notes, you write these down.

If not, you lock them in your mind because this is so important.

Okay, three questions.

The first question is this Is Scripture present in your mind?

Is scripture present in your mind?

There is no godliness, there is no being formed in godliness unless scripture is present in your mind.

And in fact, this is the application that I want to come back to again and again and again in this series.

We will be asking this the same question.

What scripture is shaping you?

In fact, this would be a great test for you to do, maybe with your spouse or your small group, your friends.

Like, like always ask them, hey, hey, listen, listen, listen, what scripture is it now?

And it can't be that scripture that you learned, you know, Jeremiah 29, 11 at Christian camp when you were 12.

It's gotta be something new.

You're being renewed day by day by God's truth.

And so the question is, what scripture is is shaping you right now?

That's the application we'll come to time and time again.

You will be sick of hearing me say it because this, I just believe this that if there is always a scripture in your mind that is shaping your affections and therefore the way that you live, then by the end of this year your life will be radically changed.

I can promise it.

That's why Paul says in Colossians 3.16, and we'll keep coming back to this, let the word of Christ dwell where?

In you.

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.

Let me give you a picture of what that can look like.

Charles Spurgeon once said this of John Bunyan, the writer of The Pilgrim's Progress.

He said, Read anything by John Bunyan, and you will see that it is almost like reading the Bible itself.

Why, the man is a living Bible.

Prick him anywhere, and you will find his blood is bible.

The very essence of the Bible flows from him.

Bunyan had almost no formal education.

He wrote The Pilgrim's Progress in prison.

And yet, when he spoke, when he wrote, when he prayed, scripture came out of him naturally.

Why?

It dwelt in him so richly that it spilled out of him.

Can we sit with that image for a moment?

I mean, Spurgeon said if you pricked John Bunyan, his blood would be biblian.

And now be honest with yourself.

If someone were to prick you right now, and if we could just like spill the contents of your mind out onto a table, what would be there?

Of course there'd be ordinary things.

You know, what am I gonna have for lunch this afternoon?

How long is this sermon gonna go on for?

Wow, this pastor is such an amazing preacher.

How blessed is this church?

That one is optional for you, but I'm sure it's there.

But underneath all the ordinary thoughts, can I ask you this?

Would there be a scripture that has been shaping you this week?

Not a verse that you once loved, not a passage you remember from years ago, but a verse and then the activity of your mind, which I mean it is busy in there, has been coming to the front time and time again, that has been dwelling in you, that has been feeding you, that has been training you, that has been shaping how you think and respond.

That loved one is what it means for the word of Christ to dwell in you richly.

And so we come to this question what scripture is shaping you?

What scripture is shaping you right now?

We put that big bold on the screen and a bright red letter so it imprints on your eyes, and hopefully all you can see when you go out into the parking lot, what scripture is shaping you?

Notice Paul doesn't just tell Titus in Titus 2 chapter chapter 2 verse 1 to just teach sound doctrine.

He said, he says, teach what accords with sound doctrine.

Teach what accords with sound doctrine.

That that word accord, it means that the teaching is to fit with, it's to be in harmony, it's to flow out of sound doctrine.

Doctrine is the truth that affects our lives.

And what we then find in Titus, and we won't have time to walk through this this morning, but but we find that this sound doctrine actually produces life change in the people.

Why?

Because the teaching of Titus then accords, it fits with, it flows out of sound doctrine.

That is what doctrine does.

It affects the heart and produces life change.

Doctrine, it's not just about clarifying things, as important as that is, it's about changing the way that you and I feel about things.

It changes us.

Jonathan Edwards put it this way.

I'm gonna read this for you.

He said, There is no such thing as any knowledge of divine things, that is doctrine, that is saving and effectual, but what has its effect upon the heart.

No such thing, no such thing as doctrine that saves unless it affects your heart, Jonathan Edwards says.

Then he goes on to say this there is no light in the understanding which does not produce heat in the affections, for the true knowledge of God is not a speculative thing, but a practical thing.

You get the picture.

The sun rises, right?

Can we dream about the summer for a few minutes?

And it brings light with it, but you step outside, and what do you feel?

The heat.

The heat.

And listen, doctrine, it cannot bring a light of understanding unless it brings a heat of affection and love and desire.

Is scripture weighty on your heart?

Is scripture weighty on your heart?

Sound doctrine must press into our hearts and shape our loves.

You can repeat true things without them ever actually changing you.

Scripture can inform you without forming or transforming you, it must press to the heart.

And so again, I mean, we're just looking at our own lives, looking at our own lives.

Has God's word been affecting your heart?

I'm not talking about like a personality that you need to be like this bubbly person or like this emotion that you should be affected by emotionalism.

What I am talking about is genuine, true life.

What this week has stirred joy in you?

What has awoken?

Reverence in you this week?

What has humbled you?

What has comforted you?

What has exposed sin in you?

What has filled you with hope in this dark, dark world?

Has it been God's word?

Is God's word present enough in your mind that it affects your heart, that it affects the way you feel about things, that it affects your emotions?

Is God's word doing that for you?

When you open up God's word, even now, loved one, even now, I mean, this is what we're doing right now corporately.

Are you moved by the scriptures?

Are you like bursting and bubbling forth right now of worship?

Get me to the close.

Get Joel up here, because I gotta worship God.

Is that where your heart is?

And then if it isn't, may the Holy Spirit drive us to repentance.

Because his word so often has been too familiar and too distant and too dull.

Many of us have avoided deep doctrine in our lives because we believe that it's cold.

Because somewhere along the way we learned how to keep doctrine from affecting our hearts.

But scripture doesn't know anything about that kind of faith.

In the Bible, wherever God is seen rightly in the mind, he is worshipped passionately in the heart.

Doctrine always leads to devotion.

Truth always leads to praise.

Right knowledge of God always presses downward into the affections.

So, loved one, can I ask you are the scriptures transforming your affections?

I want you to notice, lastly, that when Paul says teach what accords with sound doctrine, he does not leave that in the abstract.

He immediately in Titus 2 shows us what it looks like.

So that Titus 2, the rest of the chapter, is all about leading orderly lives.

Paul is willing to move from doctrine to daily life without apology.

And so notice here that in verses 2, 3, and 4, we're talking about older men and then young older women and then younger men and younger women.

And then as it goes on, we're talking about bond servants and households and the doctrine that Titus is teaching, Paul says, is to shape how we speak and how we relate to one another and how we work and how we treat one another.

It has very practical effect on us.

It leaves the theoretical and it becomes active in our lives.

And that's the third question I want to ask you.

If truth is present in your mind, if truth is weighty on your heart, is it active in your life?

Is scripture active in your life?

Is it actively changing the way you live?

I want to end by just showing you how practically this can work.

It happened for me just this past week in my own personal worship and Bible reading.

I was in Genesis 15 to 18 and Mark chapter 6.

Mark 6 · chapter mention

And I'll be honest at the end of my reading, I got to the end of it.

I don't know if this ever happens to you.

You can, you know, maybe try to be honest with me.

I just I had nothing from those chapters.

Does that ever happen to any of you?

Just me?

All right, well, then it's just me.

Well, I I I'm ashamed to say it because if you know Genesis chapter 15 to 18, you know how much meat is there.

Genesis 15 · chapter mention

There are there is a lot of good things, but I don't know what it was.

Maybe I accidentally grabbed decaf coffee that morning.

For whatever reason, I wasn't affected by it.

And so I decided, I went back to Genesis 16, and uh where Hagar names God, she says, You are the God who sees me.

And I just I store that in my mind.

I said, God, I'm gonna take that, I'm gonna meditate on it today.

It's not hitting, it's not doing anything with me now, but I'm gonna give this to you.

And something interesting began to happen.

At first, absolutely nothing happened.

But later that day, as that scripture was present in my mind and began pressing on my heart, I became acutely aware of the fact that even though I was alone at the office, I was not alone.

Because God sees me.

That is a doctrine of God's omniscience, his all-knowing power becoming active in my life.

The next day I was met with the same truth again, that when I feel forgotten, when I feel like I'm not, you know, you know, noticed by anyone, God is there and God sees me.

And all of a sudden, a doctrine of God's nearness, a doctrine of his presence, a doctrine of his care was changing the way that I even felt.

That very next morning, the day after I read Genesis 16, I was in Psalm 10, where I read that the wicked live as though God does not see, and yet the psalmist declares that God does see, that he does notice, that he does act.

What was happening?

You know what was happening?

The living word of God was active in my life, and it was bouncing around in my heart like Pong.

You remember Pong?

Listen, I'm not that young, all right?

Bouncing around in my heart, changing the way that I thought, changing the way that I live.

And I loved God's word is living and active.

And it is not unusual that it does this.

You know how often I preach a sermon and someone in the church comes up and wants to bless me and says, Man, I just got to tell you, you know, what you said.

I've been read in my own personal Bible reading, I've been reading this, and then you said this, and then they say something, and I never actually said that thing at all.

It happens all the time.

And I always take credit as though I did say it because most of the time it's actually like a really insightful thing.

But you know what's happening is they have scripture active and present in their mind.

It's weighing on their heart, and as they're hearing God's word, it's the Holy Spirit preaching a sermon that I could never preach to them.

Love one, do you want that in your life?

The Holy Spirit to preach a sermon that cannot come from any man.

Then we must ask, is it is scripture shaping you?

Is it shaping you?

Doctrine will shape you.

It'll aim your love.

It'll form your life.

It'll order your life.

The question is not whether or not doctrine is shaping you, the question is what is God's doctrine?

Is good doctrine?

Is it scripture shaping you?

The good news of the gospel is that the same Christ who saves us by grace is the Christ who is patiently shaping us by his word.

That's why doctrine matters.

Doctrine shapes your life.

You pray with me.

Father, we thank you for your word.

And God, we begin our we end our service for singing to you and asking the same thing that we asked as we began.

God, that you would incline our hearts to your testimony.

God, your word is true and it revives the soul.

And so, God, would you bring us revival?

Would you, by the power of your Holy Spirit, commit us to doctrine with this bold conviction that it matters, that it really does.

Because it is constantly shaping us either towards Christ-likeness or worldliness.

God, would this be a moment where we just apply everything that we've heard, where scripture is present on our mind, weighing down on our heart, and therefore active in our lives, because we are singing your truth back to you, Lord.

We declare this to you.

Responding to you, Lord, say a doctrine that matters.

God, we love you.

And we pray this in the name of your son.

Amen.

Amen.

Would you stand and sing with me?