Do any of you think you should be cleaned up morally?  Now, when I talk about that, some of us think sexually.  I’m not talking about that.  How many times do we falsely represent ourselves?  Sometimes it’s in trying to portray ourselves as something we’re not.  We try to appear stronger and better than we are to somehow effect this decision, or we try to feign weakness and we become helpless.  Moral excellence keeps us from lying, it keeps us to being who we are in Christ Jesus.  We don’t deceive.  We don’t vaunt ourselves.  Moral excellence expresses itself, and we don’t demand our own way.  A lack of this character, you know, is one that will always make decisions that benefit us, that exalt us, that cause comfort and ease to come our way.  We’re the light of the world, we’re the salt of the earth, we represent Jesus in everything that we do and speak.  2 Peter 1:6 says, “And to knowledge temperance” (verse 6).  We know what temperance is.  It’s just self-control.  “To temperance patience, and to patience godliness; and to godliness brotherly kindness; to brotherly kindness love.”  So, we can condense it and say this: the fruits of the Spirit; amen?  When we talk about sound doctrine, think of the fruits of the Spirit.  Is this what’s primarily emanating from our lives?  Those fruits are being acted out on a daily basis.  It’s not what we try to do, it’s who we are.  Amen?  I am a new creation.  And as I walk in the Spirit, if I live in the Spirit, I will “not fulfill the lust of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16).  Thus, this moral excellence is manifesting itself constantly in me.  What’s sound doctrine?  Jesus.  The Word.  What’s sound doctrine?  What would Jesus do in this situation, amen?  What does the Word of God say is expected of me at this moment?  Because Jesus would always do the will of the Father.  That’s sound doctrine.  Doing the will of the Father.

Father, we thank You for Your Word and for Your grace to us.  We are epistles that are being read of men.  We’ve seen these things in our midst that are unacceptable, according to Ephesians, we’re to expose them.  We’re to withdraw ourselves from those who are tolerating this in our midst, who are the promoters of this doctrine in our midst, by their constant living in the world’s system.  Those who live lives that promote the paganism that gain is godliness.  Father, we ask that, in this hour, we would find that one verse more and more prominent in our daily thinking, “By their fruits ye shall know them” (Matthew 7:20).  And the fruits we should be looking for are the fruits of Your Spirit.  That’s the new creature.  That’s the individual that is living before us the doctrine according to godliness.  Make it real, Father.  We’ll give You all the praise; we’ll give You all the glory for it.  In Jesus’ name, amen.