The Fundamentals

Thank you, Mr. Howell. I meant to mention something about Mr. Howell's leaving the area during the announcement that slipped my mind when I looked at the piece of paper, but I just wanted to say, obviously, we'll pray that things go well with the sale of the house. And even if you move to a different area, that doesn't stop you being our brother in Christ. And we'll be glad to see you and be with you whenever we can. I think I can say I speak for everyone here on that regard.

Well, it's important for us as Christians to understand what our church teaches, what do we believe in, and why. There are some things that it's good to know where did that come from.

Now, when someone doesn't grow up in the church, more and more members of the church across the nation now are people like me who have been in the church most of their lives, but a lot of people come in contact and they learn about things as it comes to them. A lot of people, something catches their attention and they go from there. It might be somehow coming to learn that the holiday of Christmas isn't really about Christ's birth, but that it has different origins and you go on from there learning other things. For some people, it starts from the realization in whatever way it comes to you that God didn't create all animals to be food and that He actually in His Word shows us that some He didn't tend to be eaten and some He didn't. A lot of people find that the first thing they learn about is the Seventh-day Sabbath and they're surprised perhaps to see that, oh, the Bible teaches that the Sabbath is on the Seventh Day of the week and that's different than other churches keep. But, as I said, whatever is the hook that brings us in, then we start learning the various doctrines of the church. Since Christianity is a way of life, it affects all the things we do, many of our little details in life. But it occurs to me some of our teachings and our doctrines seem to be a bigger deal than others. Some seem very central and some lesser. When I thought that, I said, can that be right? Doesn't James 2.10 say that whoever keeps the law if they break one point are guilty of all? Well, since I didn't ask you to turn there, you might have to take my word, but yeah, it does say that. I said, well, acknowledging that, and I do acknowledge that, it still does seem that we have some doctrines that are more basic than others. We often call those the fundamentals. When I was in Ambassador College, my freshman year, I dealt with my sophomore year, I took a class called Fundamentals of Theology, which is interesting because Dr. Ward taught the class. And then last fall, I started taking some of the online pastoral classes, and Dr. Ward taught the same exact class. And I felt like I learned even more last year than I learned back when I was younger. We also have a booklet, the Fundamental Beliefs of the United Church of God. And probably many of us have looked at this. It has, what I believe, 20 chapters. I had it written down in my notes, but my pages have got stuck together. 20 different chapters, and each one presents and explains one of our fundamental beliefs. And you might wonder, is 20 a number that God designated? Well, and the answer, of course not. We know there are 10 commandments that were given. I believe this is one of those booklets that I'm pretty sure a committee got together and decided, okay, we're going to make a booklet. We want to cover our basic beliefs. And probably different men contributed different ones, and 20 was what they settled on. Is it conceivable that they could have settled on 18, or they could have settled on 22? Probably so. That brings the question, what makes a doctrine fundamental? You know, I thought about that. I said, well, you know, I've been dancing around that or hinting. It seems like it should be central. Or another meaning of the word fundamental, you could say it's a synonym for foundational. If something's fundamental, it means things are built up on it. So a fundamental doctrine might be one that has others sometimes based upon it. Or we might say, probably a doctrine is fundamental to our church if it's so distinctive that people readily see it and know that we're know who we are. It sets us apart from others.

And then you might think, well, hey, some of our teachings fit more than one of those categories.

You know, I think they do. I wrote that down because it occurred to me as I was trying to, I'll be honest, I was analyzing myself saying, what makes the doctrine fundamental? And I thought, well, it could be this, it could be that. And some doctrines seem to fit in every one of those categories. I thought, if that's the case, it's probably really fundamental.

But today, after having said all that, I don't want to give a sermon on our fundamental doctrines. I want to turn the other way because I'm intrigued by the idea that, logically speaking, if some doctrines are fundamental, then by definition others are not. Now, that's not to say that they're not doctrines or that they're unimportant. That's why I wanted to cite that passage in James. It says, if you break one point of the law, you're guilty of all. But there are some of these that, as I said, are not fundamental, but still worth knowing. All of God's teachings are His teachings. We need to know them all. But if some are the basic stones that others are laid on, then some have to be the ones that are built on that. If some are very distinctive, there might be some that don't set us apart as much. And that doesn't mean they're not, as I said, important. So, I want to look at this idea of not fundamental doctrines today.

And I said, I sort of made up that term thinking, well, we've got fundamental doctrines or fundamental beliefs. And I said, others, I'm just calling not fundamental. It sort of occurred to me partly, I had this experience after graduating from Ambassador College, and it's happened to me a number of times, where I might be out and I'll be in a group and a topic comes up people are discussing and they'll say, hey, you went to Ambassador College? What did they tell you about? And it'll be whatever, you know, and it could be something, it's usually something that's not fundamental. You know, what did they tell you about voting or keeping birthdays or wearing neckties?

And sometimes I say, oh, they told us whatever. And sometimes I say, well, nobody told me anything about that. It didn't come up. Or I think they said something in passing.

So I think it's worth just, well, I'm not going to try to list all of what I might call not fundamental doctrines. If we've got 20 that are fundamental, how many might we have that are not fundamental? Probably a lot more. So I'm not going to try to list them. But I thought it's worth us considering maybe some categories and general ways of looking at it. And this, again, with the idea that if someone asks us what we believe, or if we have a certain practice, it's good for us to know why. Why do we do things the way we do? And it might be it's just habit or practice, but there might be something more to it. So I hinted at possible ways to classify them. I want to suggest three distinct categories. And once again, I'm making this, well, I made this up, but I think it holds some water. The first one I would call are teachings that are smaller parts of more fundamental doctrines. It might be, it's a doctrine, it's certainly derived from, we take it from Scripture, but it's part of something bigger or a subsection.

For example, we might think of, well, the Passover is a fundamental. It talks about Jesus Christ's sacrifice to pay for our sins, and we celebrate that. That's very fundamental.

It's central to our understanding of God's plan. It very clearly identifies us as God's true church.

But there's a smaller part of our overall teaching on the Passover, where we might have the question, well, who takes the Passover? Who participates?

In ancient Israel, those families who had their men circumcised kept the Passover.

I'm not going to turn there, but that's stated in Exodus 12, verses 43 and 44. God makes it very clear. Now, in the church today, we limit participation in the Passover to baptized members, and we base that on partly on what we see in Exodus, but also Colossians 2, verses 11 and 12, where it equates baptism with circumcision. Now, you want to remember, the Apostle Paul said that anyone who takes the Passover in an unworthy manner eats and drinks damnation to himself.

So I thought, well, I'm saying this is a not fundamental doctrine, but it's obviously not unimportant. Any doctrine that, you know, getting a fowl of could bring damnation upon yourself means it is very important. But since it's a smaller subsection of a broader doctrine, I think that might be an area we could call not fundamental. So I said, I wanted to reach for that example about being baptized to take the Passover to show, as I said, not fundamental is not equated with not important. It can be very important. Let's think of another one. Another area that I think of is maybe not fundamental, or what we often call judgments. In the Old Testament, we know God established a hierarchy, a civil government, and a religious government. The Levitical priesthood, you know, led the worship service. And then, well, eventually there were kings, but before that were judges. And despite the fact that God gave pretty thorough and specific instructions on how to worship Him, and on how to order society and to live, He knew that there would be some situations come up that weren't necessarily specifically addressed. And so, for those situations, God delegated authority to specific people to make binding decisions. Let's turn to Deuteronomy 17 to see His instruction on that. Deuteronomy 17 will begin in verse 8.

In verse 8 of Deuteronomy 17, it says, If a matter arises, which is too hard for you to judge between degrees of guilt for bloodshed, between one judgment or another, or between one punishment or another, in other words, it's something where the law doesn't specifically address matters of controversy within your gates, then you'll arise and go up to the place which the Lord your God chooses. And remember, that changed at first. It was where the tabernacle was located in Shiloh. Later, it moved to Jerusalem, and we believe it's moved since then. But you go to that place, come to the priest, the Levites, and to the judge there in those days, and inquire of them. And they'll pronounce upon you the sentence of judgment. And you'll do according to the sentence which they pronounce upon you, in the place which the eternal chooses. And you shall be careful to do what they tell you, according to the sentence of the law in which they instruct you, according to the judgment which they tell you, you shall do. You shall not turn aside, to the right hand or to the left, from the sentence which they pronounce upon you. Now the man who acts presumptuously, and will not heed the priest who stands to minister there before the eternal your God, or the judge, that man shall die. So you shall put away the evil from Israel, and all the people will hear and fear and no longer act presumptuously. So again, this is something that God didn't specifically lay out. So a judgment that's made, I would consider a not fundamental doctrine, but here in God's Word he's saying, at least in ancient Israel, somebody who just says, I'm not going to do that, I don't agree with his judgment, he says that person could be put to death. So again, it's pretty serious. Now we don't have the Levitical priesthood in place. Instead, Jesus Christ is our high priest, and he's at the Father's right hand. We also know that although the church, we are preparing to be kings and priests in the world tomorrow, we're not a civil government now. You wouldn't come to anyone in the church for a judgment and determine degrees of blood guiltiness, and we don't put anyone to death for not following our judgments. But we do believe that God delegated authority to the church. Let's turn to Matthew 16.

Matthew 16. Jesus Christ, who was preparing to take on that role as the high priest and to establish his church, told something important to his disciples, and it's my thought that knowing how well he knew the Old Testament scriptures, obviously they came from him, I wonder if he didn't have that passage in Deuteronomy that we just read in his mind when he said this to the disciples. And this is a famous passage of scripture. I'll begin in verse 17. Deuteronomy 16 and verse 17. Jesus had asked the disciples, who do people say I am? And they came up with these different answers, and he asked Peter, well, who do you think I am? We believe you're the Christ, you're the Son of God. Jesus answered and said, Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who's in heaven. And I also say to you that your Peter, or your Petros, a small stone, and on this rock, Petra, Jesus referring to himself, I'll build my church. The gates of Hades will never prevail against it. So he's saying, I'm going to build my church. It'll never go out of existence. And to you, pointing at those who would be the apostles, I give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound on heaven. Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed on heaven. I believe this is a point where Jesus was showing that he was going to delegate to the church the authority to make judgments in areas where the Bible might not be quite clear. Never giving authority to the church to overrule the Bible. Now, the Catholic Church teaches that the keys of the kingdom were given specifically to Peter and that he became the Pope and the succession of Popes had the authority to even overturn and overrule Scripture. We don't believe that. But as we saw in Deuteronomy, there might be some cases where you're not sure how to apply the law or what fits. And it seems that Jesus Christ planned for the leadership of the church to be able to make a judgment, a decision.

There is an example of that being done early enough in the history of the church for it to still be recorded in Scripture. That is the case of when God started calling non-Israelites, Gentiles into the church, they said, well, what do we do? The Old Testament seems to—well, of course, they wouldn't call it the Old Testament, as I explained recently. But Scripture seems to say they need to be circumcised, but others are saying, no, that doesn't account. Circumcision is how you become part of Israel. So they gathered the elders of the church together to discuss it, and they made a decision. They didn't take it lightly. Let's turn to Acts 15 to see that.

And I said, I think this is a case of a binding judgment being made, but we wouldn't see it that way, particularly now, because it's recorded in the Bible, so we see it as part of the law or the Scripture that's given. And as I said, this question was before them. When God calls Gentiles into the church, do we tell them you have to be circumcised? And if we say, no, is there any of the ceremony or ritual of the Old Testament that we need to tell them they do do? So they debated back and forth. They had most of the elders of the church come together. So I'm going to break into the thought knowing that. In verse 13, we'll see James, who we believe was presiding over the conference. He was the pastor of the Jerusalem congregation, so he was acting as president of this conference, not as a pope, though. But in verse 13, after they'd become silent, James answered, and he said, Men and brethren, listen to me. Simon, that is Peter, has declared how God at the first visited the Gentiles to take out of them a people for his name. And with the words of the prophets, and with this the words of the prophets agree, just as it's written. After this, I'll return and we'll rebuild the tabernacle of David, which has fallen down. I'll rebuild its ruins. I'll set it up.

And so that the rest of mankind may see the eternal. Even all the Gentiles who are called by my name says the eternal who does these things. Known to God from eternity are his works. So he's saying, we see from scripture that God is going to call Gentiles. Now James makes his personal judgment. He says, therefore I judge. And we'll see from what happened later that the conference ratified that judgment. I don't think it was James saying, I'm making the final word. But he's saying, here's what I judge. That we should not trouble those from among the Gentiles who are turning to God. But write to them to abstain from things polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, and from things strangled and from blood. So he's saying, this is what we did. We're not going to make them get circumcised, but we should ask them to do this. Tell them they need to not eat things that have been offered to idols, or engage in sexual immorality, or eat things with blood. For Moses has throughout many generations those who preach him in every city being read in the synagogues in every Sabbath. That's sort of like saying, if they do want to become Israelites, they can go to the synagogue, they can get circumcised and do that. They want to be in the church. Here's our decision, our judgment. Now, this judgment is now a clear teaching.

Looking back, I don't remember how long ago it was, but around Passover time, I gave a sermon looking at how we don't have to be circumcised and how God is working through the church.

But this judgment is based on previous scripture. So it's not just, now we have to make a choice, red or blue, I'll choose red because I like red. It's based on the scripture.

And it says, no, Gentiles don't have to be circumcised. But it goes further. It says, well, there are some things, though, that are going to be required. We're going to say they shouldn't eat meat that they know has been sacrificed to an idol. It intrigues me because that ruling possibly could have been different. I'm not going to explore it thoroughly. I just wanted to point out, we know Paul and a couple of his epistles addressed that. And he said, we know an idol is nothing. You know, it's just a block of stone or wood or whatever.

It doesn't affect the meat. But Paul also points out that sometimes demons are involved in sacrifice to idols, and it certainly could harm your conscience. So Paul said, if you know it was sacrificed to an idol, don't eat. But he also said, if nobody tells you, you don't have to ask.

So, as I said, there was a judgment. Perhaps it could have gone differently. It doesn't necessarily apply to the thing about sexual immorality or eating blood. The Old Testament scriptures make it very clear that those should not be done. So, I guess what I'm getting at there is, we see these are things that are not necessarily, especially the not eating something that's been sacrificed to an idol. I wouldn't call a fundamental doctrine, but I would say it's something that still applies to us. It's a judgment that the Church has made that we should follow. Not an issue that comes up very often. And when I go to Kroger to buy a steak, I don't feel like I have to ask them. Did they sacrifice this to an idol? You know, probably just went to a meat packing plant and you know, it was handled very differently. Let's look at one more area that I think they could qualify as not fundamental doctrines. And then I want to explore more thoroughly a case from each of these. The other one, much of what we do on a regular basis, is not commanded in Scripture. And sometimes not on any binding judgment, but we do things in the Church based on custom or tradition. And certainly there's nothing wrong with that. A lot of times these practices are necessary and good, but they may not be something that's permanent or that couldn't be done differently.

Let's look at a couple scriptures just to remind us of tradition. 1 Corinthians 11.

1 Corinthians 11 and verse 2. Paul writes to the Corinthian congregation, he says, I praise you brethren that you remember me in all things and keep the traditions just as I delivered them to you. He said, I talked to you some traditions, hang on to those. Paul thought they were worth... Now he didn't say obey the Scriptures. Now he says that in other places.

Let's turn also to 2 Thessalonians. He writes something similar. 2 Thessalonians 2 and verse 15. I want to cite these because if I start talking about how traditions don't have to be done or they could be different, I don't want to... Once you get the impression and I'm thinking they're just willy-nilly toss them out, there is a lot of value to the traditions. 2 Corinthians 2 verse 15 says, Therefore brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions which you were taught, whether by word or by our epistle. I'm going to explore some of those a little bit later in more depth. So I'll pick an easy one. We believe, and I think we could even call this a binding judgment, that we should conduct a formal blessing of little children within the church. That's a practice within the Church of God and it's based on what Jesus Christ did. One of the best accounts is in Mark 10 verses 13 through 16. I'm not going to turn there, but you might remember they brought little children to Jesus for him to put his hands on and bless and the apostles said, don't bother him, he's busy, you know, and try to shoo him away and Christ said, no, don't stop him, let the little children come to me. And he took them up in his arms and blessed them. We look at that, although Christ didn't say, I just set you an example, you should do as I did, like he did with the foot washing, but we say that's something we should do. So in the modern era, the Church has said, we're going to do this. Now, the question is, how do we do it? The Church has said we should have a blessing. I think how and when is more a matter of tradition. If we tried to follow the example from the Gospel accounts too closely, you know, we might have people with little children, you know, obviously Jesus isn't here, so they would go to a leader of the Church. Imagine people driving up to the home office with their children and, you know, whoever is the president at the time, say, Mr. Cubic pulls in, pulls in his parking spot, and as he's trying to get in the office, people are bringing up their children and saying, take him and bless him. Then you'd have to imagine people like Mr. Eddington or Mr. Stiver saying, don't bother him, he's busy. And he would say, no, no, bring him here. Maybe I'm taking this a little too far. But anyways, we needed to establish a tradition if we want to bless the little children. For many years, the tradition was it would be done at the Feast of Tabernacles. Now, this is before my time. I've heard the story so many times, I feel like I must have been in the audience watching it happen, but I know I wasn't. Because what happened is the number of people coming to the Feast and the number of children being born got to be burdensome. It was too difficult. So the tradition changed. And the Church said, okay, let's stop doing it at the Feast. Now, from now on, let's say the second Sabbath after the Feast. And each individual congregation will ask people to bring the little children. And that's your tradition that is largely held up for decades now. But there's still room for a variety in that.

The Church has said that's a good tradition, but there might be cases where, and since the Scripture doesn't require us to do it that way, perhaps someone wants to have their family members present, but they can't be at the congregation on that second Sabbath after the Feast. Is it okay to do it differently? Or if you can't conveniently get to the congregation in the pastor, our tradition says, yes, you can do it a different way. You can hold a private ceremony where an elder would ask the blessing. And I cite that because that's exactly what Sue and I with Connor did. We wanted a particular elder to lay hands on him and bless him because of the connections. Many of you remember Mr. Ed Smith from Cincinnati. He was actually the pastor there when Sue was born. And so he took Sue up in his arms and laid hands on her and asked the blessing. And we said, wouldn't it be really cool if we could ask him to bless Connor? So, you know, since the Church has said our tradition will allow for that, we drove down to the home office, you know, during the winter, not the second Sabbath after the Feast, and we had the ceremony done that way. So, I hope you see my intention isn't to denigrate any of our traditions or say that they're illegitimate or unimportant, but as I said, good for us to have that understanding of why we do things. So, you don't have to have that, hey, you went to Ambassador College, or we're getting worded differently. Hey, you've been in the Church for 20 years. Why do we do this this way? And you don't have to say, well, I have no idea. You know, ideally, you'd say, well, in the Scripture it tells us such and such. Or you could say, we've derived this and this has been our practice, and maybe it's changed from one time to another. But in any event, it's good for us to understand where our practices and our teachings come from. So, what I'd like to do next is take one fundamental doctrine and look at, in a little more depth, each of these three different types of not fundamental doctrines based on it. So, the one I mentioned, I mentioned earlier that a lot of people first come in contact with the Church because they gain an understanding that the seventh day is the Sabbath. Now, that's pretty basic. The seventh day Sabbath is one of the Ten Commandments. It has its own chapter in the book, so it's a fundamental belief. The seventh day Sabbath is a fundamental doctrine. But there are some subparts of that. Let's look at one of those first. Are there some subparts that are based on Scripture that still wouldn't qualify as a fundamental doctrine in themselves? Well, I could ask the question, when does the Sabbath begin each week? Well, if I ask that, I'll bet everyone here would say, well, it starts at sundown. Well, I agree, it does. But could you explain to someone why? How do we know that it's at sundown? Because my watch, it'll turn and change the date at midnight tonight. And all of our calendars and our cell phones say that. So, why do we say otherwise?

I did some research into this. Actually, I had this question. And I was surprised when I realized that it has been different in different societies in ancient history. In ancient times, it was custom for most societies to begin a new day either at sunset, but some of them did at sunrise. Now, Jewish and Muslim societies, cultures have always done it at sunset. But I was surprised to learn that Hindu calendars and ancient times began their new day at sunrise. I think if you don't have anything in the Bible, who's to say which is right? The one that struck me as odd is the Roman Julian calendar. That's the one before the one we use now. We currently use the Gregorian. But it at one time designated new days to start at high noon. Now, I always thought that would be inconvenient. It's easy to see why they change that. Nobody's... well, sometimes people are paying attention at midnight, but in the middle of the day, people would notice. But a lot of those practices endured for thousands of years. And modern times, our modern technology is what led us to get more consistent and precise ways of timekeeping. We gripe about the government setting things up and making regulations a lot. But I found it interesting in studying history to learn that it was actually railroad companies that first established time zones. And when I first read that, I thought, well, that's interesting. And it never occurred to me. We've always had time zones and wristwatches my whole life. But then you look back, there was a time when that didn't exist. And without telephones or even telegraph, does it matter for us how different the time in Prestonburg is, say, from over in Louisville? You know, before there was telegraph, generally they'd say they'd look at the sun and they'd set the courthouse clock. A lot of county courthouses have that big clock, and everybody would look at that to set their watches, and that would be local time. And High Noon, of course, here would come a few minutes earlier than High Noon over in Lexington. And they'd be, in essence, their own little time zones. But when railroads came along and telegraph, they said, you know, we can't have every town having its own time because we need to schedule those trains. And if one train is still on the track because their watch says something different than the other train coming, that ends up being a mess. So railroad companies with the train, the railroad, what was then rapid transit, but even more rapid communication of the telegraph, they established time zones. And eventually, of course, governments got on board with it. I find it interesting to see the, like I said, private industry setting a standard that government followed instead of the other way around. Anyways, what would happen in 1884, if you don't mind me finishing the history lesson, in 1884 Washington, D.C., hosted the International Meridian Conference. Doesn't that sound exciting? But they had leaders from all different countries come together to say, well, let's work out this time zone thing. And they did. They set international time zones and lines of longitude with zero degrees longitude. They decided it would be at Greenwich, Greenwich, England, which is, if you've ever heard the time Greenwich Mean Time, that the Greenwich, of course, is a suburb of London, I think where the naval headquarters were. So that's how zero degrees longitude was set. And the International Meridian Conference determined that from then on, midnight would be the official start time of new days. And I didn't realize the reason for midnight is because if it's the same time, that means each day would be the same length.

If they chose sunset, some parts of the year, the days are getting shorter and shorter. And so for half of the year, the days are shorter, then the other half they're getting longer, and it all balances out in the end. But, and I remember experiencing this when I worked in the restaurant business and punched a time clock. You know, if the days aren't the same length, such as on when the clocks were moved forward, we'd have to get out our time codes and write things on them when they set the clocks ahead or back, because the days weren't the same length, and we still wanted to get paid for all the time we worked. So anyways, that was all set. And it works pretty well.

I don't think there's a problem with us following, you know, moving our clocks ahead at midnight or turning the calendar. But when it comes to the Sabbath, that's a different business. I don't think that God recognizes the authority of the International Meridian Conference when it comes to the Sabbath. So that was a long history lesson to get to the point that, okay, when the Sabbath begins might not be the fundamental doctrine that the Sabbath itself is, we still should look to Scripture for guidance. So let's go back to the beginning. When does the Bible tell us the day begins? We can go to Genesis chapter 1, and it won't take long, I think, to establish it in Scripture. Probably not as long as my history lesson did. Genesis 1 and verse 14, God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night, and let them be for signs and seasons, for days and years. So God, to determine that we should designate our calendar and the times by the movement of the celestial bodies. We go by astronomical markers. And God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser night to rule the night. He also made the stars. And down in verse 16, yeah, oh, I wanted to go to verse 19. At the end of all this, He says, In the evening and the morning were the fourth day, that evening and morning phrase appears several times in this chapter. It's verse 5, verse 8, 13, 19, 23, and 31. And you don't need to write that down. You know what the end of each day says, And the evening and the morning were that day. I don't think it was a coincidence that He said, Evening first. That's because the evening, that is when the day starts. But I wouldn't have based it on entirely that. We have some more indications that are more specific on when the day begins. If we'll turn over to Leviticus, Leviticus 23, and we're going to read in verse 32, but we're mostly familiar. Leviticus 23 addresses all the holy days in one chapter, starting with the Sabbath and then all the seven annual holy days.

And there's one in particular that we want to know exactly when it begins and ends.

And that the one in particular we look in verse 27, The tenth day of the seventh month shall be the day of atonement. Now that's one of the annual holy days. It's the tenth day of the seventh month. It's a holy convocation and you afflict your souls, which we know means you fast, no food or water. If I've got to fast for a day, I want to know exactly when that day starts. And interestingly, this is the one day in this chapter that he is specific. If you look back to verse 32, where I started, it shall be to you a Sabbath of solemn rest, you shall afflict your souls on the ninth day of the month at evening, from evening to evening. Now we just read a moment ago that it's the tenth day, that's the day of atonement. He makes the point that on the ninth day at evening, in other words, that's the time when you shift from being the ninth day to the tenth day, at evening. He gives us a lot more precision on when this day begins and ends, because as I said, if you're going to be going without food and water, you want to know. And how many of us have been there at sundown ending atonement looking and saying, you see the sun anymore? Is it down? I've been in that position, of course, and I've been there, you know, at the start of atonement. Usually, I've had a glass of water say, do I have time for one more drink? Or do I put it away? Now that term evening doesn't usually cause us a problem with most days. With the Passover, it's come up, because you've probably heard the discussion. The Hebrew is a word that typically means between the evenings, and it can describe that period that's not quite as precise between when the sun finishes going below the horizon and when it gets dark. So there might be some wiggle room. If you turn over to Deuteronomy 16, though, we get a little more precision on when a day starts. Deuteronomy 16 in verse 6. This is talking about the Passover, actually. It says, In the place where the Eternal your God chooses to make his name abide, there you shall sacrifice the Passover at twilight, at the going down of the sun, at the time you came out of Egypt. So here, he doubles up to say, if it's twilight, but it's at the going down of the sun.

And of course, with Passover, we don't start to Passover formally until after sundown, but we usually begin it between the time when the sun goes down and before it's fully dark. That satisfies the between the evenings. But for the Sabbath, the weekly Sabbath, it's a good bet to say at sundown. I've once or twice had that discussion with people who say, well, if there's if there's if you know there's that section between the evenings, you know, does that vary when we start or stop the Sabbath? I've always said, if you have any concern, start it at sundown, and if you could stop keeping the Sabbath after it's completely dark the next time, it might give you an extra couple minutes of Sabbath. Which is funny, when I was a teenager, I didn't want any extra minutes of the Sabbath. But as I got older, I said, I'd love to have more Sabbath, because we have two in a week. This shows you can put a lot of detail and a lot of Bible study into determining something that's not a fundamental doctrine. Which sometimes that's kind of fun. We a lot of times spend a lot of time looking at these things that aren't so fundamental, because the fundamentals are so obvious and big. And we're going to get back to some of that as far as how we keep the Sabbath. I'll look at some of the fundamentals and then look at some of the not fundamentals. But with this aside, or having said all this and established it, as I said, and we can see it's not trivial, even though it might be detailed. There are sometimes things that are less specific.

And as I said, there are some not fundamental doctrines that aren't based on Scripture so much as on a judgment. So I want to consider a judgment about the Sabbath. We just went to a lot of trouble. One of the reasons I wanted to make sure we established this and spent that time looking at the Scriptures, we know for sure now when the Sabbath begins. It begins at sundown. But what happens if you happen to live in a place where sometimes the sun doesn't go down? That might sound odd, but that does happen. It's a real question. It's a question that's come up to the church saying, what do we do? You know, sun's going towards the horizon, then it comes back up.

So, well, for that, I want to remind us of those Scriptures we read earlier. I'm not going to turn there, but remember in Deuteronomy where it said, if you have a question and you don't know what to do, go to the Levites and the judge who will be in the land at that day and follow his judgment.

We know that Jesus Christ looked at the apostles and said, I'm going to give you the keys of the kingdom. What you bind on earth will be bound on heaven. And as I said, that didn't mean they could overrule what the Bible says, but if there's a question that the Bible doesn't address, they could make a decision. And that's the case for if you happen to live in the Arctic circle, there's about three months of the year when the sun doesn't go down, and about another three months of the year when it doesn't come up. Now, that came to mind when I was working on the sermon, but I distinctly remembered the first time it ever came up. I was at Ambassador College as a student, and I think we were discussing the church-making judgments because I was unfamiliar with it, and someone said, oh yeah, like if you live up in the Arctic circle. I said, what are you talking about? Well, you know, the sun doesn't go down. When do you keep the Sabbath? I never thought about it. And this fellow I was talking to explained that Mr. Armstrong and men that he consulted with had made a decision for members of the church back then. But it was a judgment, and it was something that could be changed if necessary. What I learned in studying this is there are a number of possible, reasonable alternatives. I read a lengthy article by Dr. Samuel Bakiyoki, who's not a member of the church, but you might remember some of you probably have a couple of his books. He wrote one that came out in the mid-90s right when a lot of trauma was happening in the Church of God. He wrote one called From Sabbath to Sunday, where he researched in the Vatican's archives. And, you know, and by the way, Dr. Bakiyoki is a Seventh-day Adventist, so he is very concerned about the Sabbath. This article I read, he explained a lot of the calculations for different alternatives. One of the alternatives is just to look at when it looks like the sun's going down when it seems reasonable. Another one is to set a specific time each day, even though the sun's in the sky, and say it started a Sabbath, and the same time ending. Typically, it would be 6 p.m., and that was based on mathematical calculations. Or another alternative is to say, well, say we were further south from this spot. If you go far enough south, eventually you'll get to where the sun does set, and then just use that time. And there are some others, but those are the three most likely possibilities.

Well, I wanted to see if the teaching of the church was different today than it was when I was in Ambassador College, and I was actually surprised to find out that it has been changed. So I copied from the UCG study paper on the beginning of the Sabbath.

And let me read for you. It's a little bit lengthy, but I thought it was enlightening. It says, members living above the Arctic Circle, which by the way is 66 degrees, 22 minutes north latitude, live in a region where there is no sunset or sunrise for about three months in the winter. Similarly, there's no sunset or sunrise for about three months in the summer.

There is no specific biblical instruction for people living in such an area.

Now, no one in the church can change what God has set, but in extreme situations like this, the church must make administrative recommendations. To adhere to Scriptural principles, it is the view and recommendation of the church that a member should use the time of sunset at the nearest latitude directly south of his location where a sunset actually occurs in order to mark the beginning and ending of the Sabbath day. The same principles would apply to individuals living south of the Antarctic Circle. There aren't too many people, except on that polar scientific station down in Antarctica, there aren't many people there. Now, this is interesting. It says, in the past, the church has encouraged members in these remote areas to use a designated time, such as 6 p.m., to begin the Sabbath and 6 p.m. the next day to end the Sabbath. However, we believe that this recommendation was arbitrary and has no relationship to the biblical designation of sunset beginning the Sabbath. So, it is the current recommendation of the church that a member who lives in an area north of the Arctic Circle observe the Sabbath and Holy Days from the sunset time as determined by the time of the sunset nearest latitude directly south of his location where there actually is a sunset. We believe that this is more consistent with the biblical designation for the beginning and ending of the Sabbath. And I picked that. I thought that was a good example of a judgment, also one that none of us have to worry about going out and putting into practice, because the sun will always come up and go down in Kentucky. Well, and if it doesn't, then we've got bigger problems to worry about, like the sun has turned black and the moon turned to blood and things like that. But I find it interesting, you know, years ago, as I said, Mr. Armstrong was the leader of the church and he got advice and made a judgment. And people lived by that, and I believe God respected that judgment because we saw in the Scripture where Jesus Christ delegated to the church the authority to make binding judgments. But when that happens, the church then has the authority to say, well, maybe we made a mistake. Let's unbind that judgment and bind it a different way. And personally, I like the way they're doing it now better. Now, when I first learned of this, I said 20-some years, 20 years, yeah, it was about over 20 years ago now that I was in college.

I heard that they were doing it at 6 p.m. I said, that doesn't sound right. And it rubbed me the wrong way, but I had to say, well, the church has the authority to do that. I've got an easy way to not have to worry about it. All I have to do is not live near the North Pole. And that's what I chose to do. Actually, I didn't make that decision for that reason, but always say that a lot of times if the church is making a judgment, it's on something that you could easily avoid just by not being in that situation. But as I said, I wanted to pick a judgment that could have been different and has been to show that authority is there. Certainly, whether the sunset starts when the sun is at its lowest point or, you know, at the nearest place there would be, or if it starts at 6 p.m., that's not a fundamental doctrine. The fact that the seventh day is a Sabbath is fundamental. But I think it's good for us to understand, as I said, where the current practice comes from. Let's look at an example of one, a not fundamental doctrine that's based on tradition.

As I said, we can think big, what does the scripture tell us about the Sabbath?

I mean, it's interesting because sometimes, as I said, you get those questions. You want to ambassador, what do they teach you there about doing this on the Sabbath, or should we not do that? But if you think just fundamental, what does the Bible tell us? The Bible tells us the Sabbath was created by God, He made it holy, it's the seventh day, He commanded us to keep it holy, and He specifically said, don't work. Now, Isaiah 58 goes into a little more detail where it says, call the Sabbath a delight. Don't seek your own pleasure or be speaking your own words. And I gave a sermon, it's interesting, the longer I serve as a pastor, the more I can say, I gave a sermon on this. Now, eventually, there'll come the time where I'll say, I gave a sermon on that so long ago, I need to give a sermon again on it. But I'd like to focus, it's easy to see things that we see not to do, but what do you do? It did say to call the Sabbath a delight, and I'll mention, I'm not going to turn there, but Hebrews 10 and verse 25 tells us, do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together. If we put that, because there it's not necessarily tied to the Sabbath, but we know assembling together is something we should do, and many places in the Old Testament, it refers to the Sabbath as a holy convocation. It's a holy convocation, and a convocation is assembling together, and this one's holy because it's a Sabbath. So we need to come together. Then the question is, what exactly do we do? And how do we do it? Does the Bible tell us? Well, it's a good thought to say we're going to come together and worship God. And if we read the Old Testament accounts at the temple, they worship God by sacrificing animals. We know we don't have to do that. Christ was the one true sacrifice that took care of that. So if we don't do that, though, how do we worship? Now we know what we do do. I didn't think that through what I said, but do we know how it came to be this way or why? The Bible doesn't exactly tell us, but it gives us some examples. Let's turn to Luke chapter 4. And as I said, let's look at some of the examples, get some idea. Let's see if we can find a little bit about how we came to do things the way we do, and could they be different? Luke 4 and verse 16 says, He, this is speaking of Jesus Christ, He came to Nazareth where He'd been brought up, and as His custom was, so He did this regularly, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and He stood up to read. He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah, and He opened the book. Of course, we know the story. He read a prophecy that applied to Him. But our understanding is that the Jewish synagogue services then, and I believe it's still similar today, one part of their worship service on the Sabbath is to have adult members read from the Scriptures. And that sounds similar. I've been doing that, not necessarily just reading a section of a book, but we regularly have reading of the Scriptures in our service.

We can also see from another example that it was fairly common for them to have teaching by the rabbis. Let's turn to Acts chapter 13. Acts 13 will begin in verse 14. This is a case where Paul and Barnabas were traveling, you know, doing the work, preaching and converting people. Well, God was going to converting, but they were His tools.

Acts 13 and verse 14. When they departed from Perga, they came to Antioch and Pisidia, and they went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and sat down. So they said, well, it's the Sabbath. We need to go... They wouldn't have said to church that they go into synagogue. And after the reading of the law and the prophets... Now, we just saw an example of the reading of the law and the prophets. The ruler of the synagogue sent to them, saying, men and brethren, if you have any word of exhortation for the people, say on. And of course, Paul stood up in motion with his hand as the men of Israel and you who fear God, listen. And he launched into a short... Well, I'm not sure how short, because Paul could talk a long time, but some type of what we call a sermon. So here's a couple of things we see. There was a public reading of the law and prophet or reading of scripture. Apparently a bit different than we often do it today, but it also seems common that there was exhortation, some type of preaching, not by just anyone. We suspect that maybe it was by the particular garments they were wearing or how they acted that the leader of the synagogue recognized that they were rabbis, probably especially the Apostle Paul. Remember, he was a Pharisee taught by Gamaliel. So perhaps he was, hey, a visiting speaker, you know. So if you have anything to say, stay on. It's interesting. That's not something we typically do in our church. It's not uncommon to have visiting speakers, but, you know, we don't have... Just somebody walks in, I say, hmm, you look like you might have something to say. Why don't you come on up? Let's look at one more example here in Acts while we're nearby in chapter 16. We'll see, for one thing, that the physical building wasn't a necessity. The people were going to gather on the Sabbath and have some type of service or meeting. We see an example of that here in Acts 16 and verse 13. On the Sabbath day, we went out of the city to the riverside where prayer was customarily made, and we sat down and spoke to the women who met there. Now, I've heard some interesting speculation on this, that maybe there were so few Jews in the city that there were no men who were Jews, and so the women were there because it talks about prayer. It doesn't talk about the Bible reading or preaching, but we're going to see in a moment that it was tradition. Women didn't read from the scriptures during a synagogue service, and they didn't preach. So if there were no male Jews, perhaps they just went there and prayed. And, of course, when Paul and Barnabas were there, then they did join in and do some teaching. But prayer, it seems, is an appropriate part of a service.

Now, we've already seen some things that we have in common with the way we do things, but not necessarily a description and an outline. Let's look at another example, and this might be the most clear example. It's in 1 Corinthians chapter 14 of what a church service was like in the first century church during the Apostolic Age.

You can tell I've been reading some church history and commentaries. If I use a term like Apostolic Age, that's not usually what I say. But the time when the apostles were around, this was the Apostle Paul, and he'd been to Corinth, and he was the founder of that congregation.

God called people through his teaching, and he set it up and ordained elders, and then he was away and got news, so he wrote back to them. So let's join in here. 1 Corinthians 14 again in... Let me say that again. Beginning in verse 26. Paul's a little taken aback. He wasn't sure they were doing things quite right, so he wants to correct them on how they're doing services.

He says, How is it then, brethren? Whenever you come together, each of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revelation or interpretation. Let everything, let all things be done for edification. So the only things that should be going on are things that are for edification. He says, If anyone speaks in a tongue, let it be two or at the most three, each in turn, and let one interpret. If there is no interpreter, let him keep silent in church, and let him speak to himself and to God.

Basically, Paul's saying, If someone's up there speaking something, nobody can understand. That's not for edification, so if there's not an interpreter, it doesn't need to be going on. You can pray to God that way. He said, Let two or three of the prophets speak, and let others judge. But if anything is revealed to another who sets by, let the first keep silent. For you can all prophesy one by one, that all may learn and all may be encouraged.

The spirits of the prophet are subject to the prophets. For God's not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints. He says, Let your women keep silent in church, for they're not permitted to speak.

They are to be permissive, as the law also says. And if they want to learn something, let them ask their own husbands at home. One of the things I've heard pointed out, that they might have still been following the practice of the Jewish synagogues of the men and women sitting in separate areas of the church. It didn't mean the women weren't allowed to speak a word from the time they walked in. Fellowshipping before or after would be appropriate. I heard some speculate that maybe the women were over there, and they had a question about what was preached, so they were shouting over to the husband, Hey, what's going on?

And Paul said, No, it's not supposed to be that way. Wait till afterwards and ask your husband what was, you know. And he goes on and says, Did the word of God come originally from you, or was it you only that it reached? If anyone thinks himself a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write to you are the commandments of the Eternal.

So he's saying, I have the authority to say it should be this way. If anyone's ignorant, let him be ignorant. Therefore, brethren, earnestly desire to prophesy and do not forbid to speak with tongues. Let all things be done decently in an order. Now, I find this section is interesting, and it's revealing.

It seems that speaking or singing in church services might have been open to more people than we traditionally do now. He said, all of you may prophesy, as long as it's one by one. He didn't say you all had to, but as I said, it seems like it might have been a little different. But he does say it had to be done in an orderly way. Paul, I've heard some people say this description reminds them of a spokesman's club meeting, where several people could speak one by one, and then another judge that sounds like speakers and then evaluators.

Now, we didn't adopt that for our church services, but many of us are familiar with that format, and it can be an effective format. But it's pretty clear what Paul describes isn't quite how we do our church services.

And we don't have to feel bad about this. This isn't a command. You know, Jesus Christ didn't say, okay, when I'm gone and you have services, I want you to do it exactly like this. Apparently, if he did discuss it, nobody recorded it, or he left it open. This is how one congregation did, and it's not a bad model. But when we come down to it, there just isn't a commanded format in the Bible. We notice principles, and we've seen several good examples. And here we find two, I think, hard and fast principles. One is everything has to be done decently in order, decently and in order. Paul's pretty clear on that. Second, he says everything has to be done for edification. I know edification means building up, improving. So anything that doesn't contribute to that shouldn't be a part. Now, the things he mentioned, there are some that don't really come up. I don't know of anybody that's being given the gift of being able to speak in a foreign language, so we don't address speaking in tongues, whether or not to have that as part of our services.

We also don't have prophetic revelation of someone. At least, it happened in my experience, where God suddenly revealed some new truth to someone. If He did, we might have questions. But typically, that leaves us with the two of the things that he described. One, let's just say, in general, music. Paul said a song. Music is a good part of our church services. It fits when we read the Old Testament accounts of services at the temple, where Solomon established many singers and musicians, and that was part of their worship. The other part is what he calls prophesying and interpreting. If we look at the New Testament, most of the places where it says prophesy in the New Testament doesn't mean predicting the future, but it means what we would call inspired preaching.

Actually, this very chapter, if you look back to verse 3 of 1 Corinthians 14, I think it gives us the best definition we need of what he meant when he said prophesying. It says, He who prophesies speaks, edification and exhortation and comfort to men. So, edification, exhortation, and comfort.

That's why I say, what should a sermon or a sermonette accomplish? At least one of those three things. And if it's doing really well, perhaps all three. But if it doesn't accomplish those, then it's not it's not for edification of the church. With that in mind, look at what we do at our services each week.

Look at it. Could it be done differently? It seems possibly it could. And I don't think it would be a sin. Now, I should say, do I want to do it differently? No, I didn't give all this as a preposition to saying, now we're going to change how we do services. I don't want to do things differently. Since I've been 10 years old, my experience has been I come to services and a song leader calls us to order. And we have three congregational hymns, then an opening prayer, a sermonette. In most cases, of course, we see there are variety variations in that. Usually, followed by another hymn, announcements, and then a hymn or special music, a sermon, finally one more group hymn and a closing prayer. Now, I thought about that. I wanted to write it down, and it's actually we have a policy. And when I was hired in the ministry, they gave me this notebook. I said, I didn't know that there was a pastor's policy manual. There is. There's written policies on all kinds of things, including how do you conduct church services? But where did we get this format? I had that question. Where did this come from? And all my studying, I have to say, I just don't know for sure. I thought that there was something in Mr. Armstrong's autobiography that mentioned it. And when I was working on the sermon, I got it out and scanned back and forth. There is a mention of when he started doing the World Tomorrow program that at first he designed it to be like a mini church service, which is back then they called the program the Radio Church of God. And it included singing and preaching, but he doesn't describe why it was that way. But my thought is he and all the other members of the congregation thought that's the way church should be. So it wasn't, you know, I don't think they just said, let's start from scratch and invent something. Let me draw on my study of history to make another educated guess, though. If we go back in time, well, actually we don't have to go back in time. We could go tomorrow to a Catholic church or an Episcopalian, and we'd see things done a bit differently than we're used to. For much of history, the Catholic church has what's called a liturgy, a much more ceremonial approach, and it includes sometimes singing in Latin and burning incense and the priest drinking wine and stuff that doesn't look like church to us. Excuse me.

One of the reasons it doesn't, you know, seems foreign to us is when the Protestant revolution came along, and specifically the Puritan movement in England, they were called Puritans because they wanted to do what was called purifying the church, removing things that they didn't think were right. So they said, we want a service, a church service, that's less ceremonial and more educational, less ceremony, more education, which means more preaching, and specifically in a language we can understand. Because back when the Puritan movement came along, all church services were in Latin, and most people didn't know Latin. I based that, and then also when I was studying history, I was reading a book on Puritan practice in America, and I was surprised. I found one description of their church service, and it said, their church service usually had an opening prayer, two or three congregational hymns, and then a sermon that lasted sometimes around 40 minutes in some places about 90, and then a closing hymn, another hymn and a closing prayer. And I said, wow, that sounds an awful lot like the way we do church. And it turns out most American churches follow a practice somewhat similar. What did surprise me, since I didn't really attend any other church regularly before coming to the true church, I was surprised when I learned that what they call a sermon in most of those churches is what we would call a sermonette. A 20 minutes is a long sermon for most people, so I appreciate your being willing to sit. It reminds me, I haven't looked. Oh, we're going to end on time. We're close. But what most Americans expected for a church service is what became the practice for first the radio church of God, worldwide church of God, and now the United Church of God. We've made some adjustments along the way, but it's based partly on Scripture and largely on tradition. And I made a point. Traditions are good. They're important. Mr. Holiday in teaching a class recently reminded us that tradition can give dignity. It can show unity.

And it maintains standards. So traditions are good, but they can be varied at times. And of course, you've experienced it. I don't know if it was a shock for many of you, but when I first moved into the area, I don't know how many times when I'd be in services in Portsmouth, we'd have a sermonette stand up and sing, and I'd start to close my book and sit down and go, oh, they do two hymns after the sermonette in Portsmouth. It took me a year to get used to that. And I love now when we have visitors, because I can sort of chuckle when I see them start to sit down. But, you know, it's just a different tradition. And there are some other things that vary. As a matter of fact, I showed you this page. It allows for the different types of formats, including the one we do here in in Athens, where we normally don't have a sermonette to make the service a little bit shorter.

And why do we have sermonettes? As I said, there's nothing in the Bible, and even in a lot of American church traditions. But they accomplish a lot. They're part of our tradition, and they're valuable. Say, who gives sermonettes? Traditionally, deacons and elders and leading men in the congregation. There's room for variety and change. And a few weeks, I guess it's been a month or so ago, we did the Youth Day in Portsmouth, where we had several of the young men give talks that were a couple minutes. Traditions are good because, well, it's nice that when something is a tradition, you realize you can make variations when it's appropriate. We have a tradition of who can lead in prayer. Traditionally, baptized men in the congregation. There's room for variation in that, as needed. We love our traditions. They're important, and they're valuable. And, you know, sometimes a tradition is a church doctrine. Some traditions don't rise to that. There's a tradition here that when there's morning services, we enjoy a meal together. That's a local tradition. So, some traditions, as I said, we call doctrine some not. But they're all good. So, you might come back again. What's the point of all this? It's a long sermon to talk about things that are not fundamental. Well, I wanted to remind you, the main point is it's good for us to think about why we do what we do and to be able to explain what we believe. In some cases, if someone asks, why do you do this? You could turn to a scripture and say, well, the Bible says to do it, so we do it. In others, there's a little history involved, or you might have to get several scriptures to put things together. And as I said, though, if a doctrine is not fundamental, it doesn't mean it's unimportant or trivial. So, we want to be able to understand and explain.

I'll add something else for us to keep in mind now that we're coming near the end of this. Remember that scripture in Deuteronomy about if someone has a question, arise and go to the priest and the judge in that day. Well, we're looking forward to a time when the priest or the judge that'll be in the land is us. You know, especially we're looking ahead to the Feast of Tabernacles, when we'll look ahead to the millennium. During that millennium, we'll be kings and priests. People will come to us, perhaps, with a question saying, I need a judgment. Well, you know, today, when there's a question in court, a lot of times judges look at what's called case law, meaning what decisions were made earlier. Are there wise examples for me to follow? If I, if the judge knows why an earlier judge made a decision, it can affect his decision. I think that'll be important for us when we're kings and priests or judges. If someone has a decision we need to make, well, we can look back and say, why were decisions made before in the church? Can those lead me? And even well before the millennium in our own lives. Sometimes there's something we don't necessarily need to go to a judge, but we've got to make a judgment. If we understand how judgments are made, it can help us make wise decisions. So I think it's good for us to do that. So let's learn, let's study, let's make sure we understand all of our doctrines, fundamental and not fundamental, and make wise decisions.