Happy Fall Y’all!

It is so exciting to finally be experiencing some cooler weather, and even more is on the horizon. Praise the Lord for his providence in the seasons and his sovereignty over their changing.

There are two things that have been on my heart and my mind frequently over the last several weeks:

• Right Doctrine
• Right Doctrine Applied

Many today tend to shy away from the word “doctrine” as if it were something scary or confusing. But the reality is that it is essential to all aspects of following Christ in our time here on earth. Doctrine is the technical term referring to what you believe. In that sense, the late R.C. Sproul was right when he said, “Every man’s a theologian.” We may not be academic thinkers, and we may struggle to express it, but we all have beliefs. We all have doctrine that we hold to. It isn’t doctrine itself that is vital, but right doctrine. Doctrine that is based in, submissive to, and crafted by Scripture alone.

How are we to make disciples if we misunderstand the gospel? How are we to love our neighbor well if we do not understand true justice? How can we expect our worship of God to be acceptable if our concept of God is not as he really is? How can we be committed to the church in a way that honors God if we don’t understand God’s purpose for his church? God has given us his word and his word must be the final authority for what we believe.

A “confession of faith” is a man-made document that attempts to summarize what we believe about the core elements of God’s word, and to support those assertions with scriptural evidence. Oak Grove’s official statement of faith is closely derived from the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith. This is why, over the next several Wednesday nights, our adult bible study time will be spent walking through this confession of faith and examining the scriptural evidence for these positions. All this is with the goal of pursuing a right understanding of God’s word to the best of our abilities.

Now, knowing what you believe, why you believe it, and believing rightly in accordance with God’s word is step one, but what good is right belief if it is only head knowledge? James warns of this very pitfall in James 1:22. But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. And again, later on in James 2:18 he says: But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. It isn’t enough to merely know right doctrine, but we must also live it out.

This is true for all believers, even and especially the church leaders. There have been many men with sound doctrine, who taught sound doctrine, and believed sound doctrine, but who then disqualified themselves from ministry and brought reproach upon the gospel because they failed to live out what they preached.

So I want to encourage you all to join us on Wednesday nights as we discuss what we believe and why, and I encourage you to feel free to ask questions. We want you to grow in your understanding of the truths of God’s word so that you can then put them into practice in your life. But also, I want to ask you to pray. Pray for one another, that we would practice what we claim to believe. That we would be doers of the word and not hearers only. That we all as brothers and sisters in Christ would strive to put away sin and live righteously before our God and a world of lost sinners in desperate need of the hope that is found only in him. And also, I would ask that you pray for us as elders and our families, not only that we would lead well, but that we would live out sound doctrine with all humility, not for our own sake, but that we might never bring reproach upon the name of our savior. Pray that we might set an example worth following, and that we might be ever vigilant against the attempts of the enemy to deceive the shepherds of God’s church.

1 Corinthians 10:12 – Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.

May the Lord bless you and keep you for his name’s sake. Love in Christ.

-Bro. Adam