Aren’t you glad the Holy Ghost is the one that watches over the church?  He’s the one that will see to it, whenever it’s necessary, that the judgment of God will come.  The purification, the purging out of leaven, because everything that is necessary to deal with leaven and false teachers in our midst is already in the Word of God.  What do you do?  You mark them that cause divisions; amen?  What do you do?  You don’t fellowship with them.  You don’t eat with them.  We have everything set forth that’ll keep us pure and keep us prepared for the return of the Lord.  The only problem is the majority of the church doesn’t do it because they fear men’s faces, because they’re lovers of creatures more than lovers of God.  They love grandma more than they love Jesus.  He said in Matthew 10, “If you love them more than me, you’re not worthy of Me,” amen?  If you love grandma more than Jesus, you’re not worthy of Him.  If you love your husband, your wife, your children more than Jesus you are not worthy of Him.  You shouldn’t even pause when circumstances necessitate the application of the law of God.  The law is for the lawless.

This is sound doctrine.  We’re to teach sound doctrine.  Don’t give heed to all these fables.  All it does is start arguments about the Bible and things that are not necessarily even applicable to the Scriptures.  Things that just minister more questions, things that have nothing to do with redemption.  Things that have nothing to do with the building up of the church.  Just want to argue over the obscure.  Why don’t we take the time that we’re arguing over the obscure and use that time for doing what’s obvious?  Would that be a good idea?  Sound doctrine is not a systematic theology.  Sound doctrine is not a creed.  Sound doctrine is the fruit.  By their fruit they’re known.  Sound doctrine is observed by people who are doers of the Word, not hearers.  Sound doctrine is observable, it’s not just something that is intellectually apprehended.  Too many people have thought that doctrine is just a systematizing of certain biblical truths and revelations.  They were still studying and arguing in the fourth century over Christology.  They were still arguing and having church counsels in the fourth century over Soteriology—that’s the doctrine of Christ, the study of the person of Christ.  Was He divine?  Was He human?  Was He half‑and‑half?  They’re still arguing this kind of stuff.  Well, they were arguing to systematize many of these different things when the canon was already established.

Doctrine is what you choose to do with your life.  Doctrine is what you do, not what you say you believe.  That’s your doctrine.  When the reformation took place, they did not break from Romanism, they just altered it.  There were still many Roman Catholic practices that they adopted.  There’s another segment of people and they put such great credibility in these teachers and in these dogmas that were established.  Then you’ll have another people today that are really big on the church fathers.  You can read book after book after book by these people and virtually every author almost deifies Augustine.  Augustine was the theologian who established the systematic theology of Roman Catholicism.  All of these hundreds of years later Calvin virtually “protestantized” Augustine’s position and theology.  I personally believe Augustine was a heretic, yet he is the foundational individual that both Calvinism and Romanism is built on.  Can I tell you something?  The reformation doesn’t go back far enough.  The study and the history of the church fathers is not going back far enough.  I’m going to bank my eternal salvation on men that were moved by God who has given us all things, that pertain to life and godliness.