Non-Fundamental Doctrine

Thank you. Mrs. Evans and Ms. Evans. It's kind of neat to say it like that. There's nothing like family harmonies. I just love that. That's brother, sister, mother, daughter. Maybe one of these days I'll get to do something like that with Connor. We had the sermon at workshop this morning where we were talking about one of the ways you can get everyone's attention sometimes is to go up and be silent for a little bit. Not that I was worried about having your attention.

It's important for us as Christians to understand what our church teaches, what we believe, and why. Why do we believe certain things? Why do we do some things the way we do? We come to the church from different places. For some of us, as we first come in contact, I'm talking about those who didn't grow up in the church. But if you grew up in mainstream Christianity, one of the first things could be, for instance, learning that Christmas isn't about Jesus Christ's birth. And then you move on to learn other things. For some, it might start with this sudden discovery that not all living creatures were made to be eaten. And suddenly there's this revelation that God put instruction in His Word what animals should be eaten and which ones should not. A large number of people first learn about the Seventh-Day Sabbath. I've heard that story again and again, though suddenly people are out there and the first thing that they saw of the truth was the Sabbath. And then they learned more and they drew in more. But since Christianity is a way of life, it touches and affects all sorts of things we do, then it seems to make sense that some of our teachings, some of our doctrines or beliefs seem to be a bigger deal than others. I say, well, can that be right? Did I just say that?

Doesn't James 2 and verse 10 say that even if you keep the whole law but if you offend in one point, you're guilty of all? Well, yeah, it does say that. You can turn there if you want. I wasn't going to turn there, but I'm pretty sure it says that. But still, it does seem that some doctrines are a little more basic than others. We often refer to them as fundamentals.

When I was in Ambassador College, one of my freshman Bible classes was called Fundamentals of Theology. And it's one of the classes I learned more than most others. Matter of fact, in the online pastoral classes, I took it again with the same instructor. Dr. Ward taught it back when I was in college, and he taught it again, and I think I learned just as much the next time. And I think it's still in the curriculum at ABC. I was wondering, Kelly, is that correct? They still have Fundamentals of Theology? So we have some things that we call Fundamentals. Matter of fact, we have a booklet, Fundamental Beliefs of The United Church of God. And it has 20 chapters, each referring to and explaining one belief that's considered fundamental. Now, you wonder, is 20 an arbitrary number? I think so. I don't know that God said, okay, there are 20 fundamental beliefs. I couldn't find the chapter and verse that says that. So if someone wanted to break it down differently, say we had a shortage of paper, we might have come up with 15 and been happy there, or other people might have argued, no, it should be 25. We left some out. What is it that makes a doctrine or a belief fundamental? That's an interesting thought. Have you considered it? And I'm not going to say that I've got a dictionary answer. I could have gone there and looked, but I wanted to just toss it around in my head. I thought, well, a fundamental doctrine should be central. It should be something that if you change it, it affects a lot of other things. It's in the center of who and what we are. Now, another synonym for fundamental could be foundational. Something that's fundamental means it's at the fundamental. That's an old word for like foundation, meaning other things can be built on top of it.

Or perhaps a different way of looking at it might be to say that something that's fundamental is something that's so distinctive, it sets us apart. It's something that, you know, if you see something that makes us radically different or stand out from other crowds, you can say, well, that's a fundamental thing about us. It shows who we are. Now, that's just three different ways that I came up with. And you might say, well, wait a minute. Some of our fundamental beliefs fit more than one of those topics or those categories. And I'd say, yeah, probably so. And perhaps the more a belief seems to fit across those, maybe the more fundamental it is. And if you say, well, Frank, you're being kind of wishy-washy today about that.

That's because, to be honest, today my purpose was not to talk about fundamental beliefs, because I'm intrigued by the logic of it. Think of it this way. If some of our beliefs are fundamental, then by definition some are not. Now, do we ever talk about are not fundamental doctrines?

Now, when I say not fundamental, I don't mean trivial. I don't mean unimportant. And that's one of the reasons I wanted to cite that Scripture in James. All of God's law is God's law. None of it is trivial where, oh, you can break this part of God's law and it doesn't matter because it's not fundamental. All of the church doctrines or all of the church teachings are church teachings. They're there for a reason.

But I am saying if some doctrines form a foundation that others are built on, then some are resting upon the foundation and aren't quite so fundamental. If some of our doctrines are very distinctive, they really set us apart from people that don't know the truth, there could be some that don't set us apart all that much.

Now, that doesn't necessarily mean they're not fundamental, but a possibility. Some doctrines, we might have some doctrines in the church that could be different and it wouldn't matter a whole lot. Is that true?

And by the way, I should preface this. I'm not setting up to teach any kind of heresy at all today. That's not my point. But I want to consider this idea of what I... I coined the term, not fundamental doctrines or not fundamental beliefs. And there might be quite a few. So I'm not going to try to categorize and describe every single one. But I'd like... Actually, one of the reasons I wanted to discuss this today is it occurred to me this could be a good subject to consider for our next round of in-home Bible studies. There are a lot of these teachings that they're not necessarily the trunk of the tree, but they're not necessarily so far out on the twigs that we should always ignore them. We should know what we believe and where it came from. So some of these things, it'd be worth going into. I'll even mention, I don't know if others of you have had this experience. I remember not long after I got out of Ambassador College, I'd be out, perhaps sometimes at home or visiting a congregation and people would come up to me and you get the question always phrased like this. Well, you went to Ambassador College, what did they teach you about? And then they'd go into something. And sometimes it'd be something I'd go, huh, they didn't teach me a thing about that. Or I might say, well, they didn't teach me anything different than what you've heard anywhere else. But people want to know because sometimes it's not something that's fundamental.

So let's look at some of these. Let's look at some of what are doctrines of the Church. They guide and govern our lives, but as I said, maybe not so fundamental. Now, before we get into some of those, let's try to categorize. I've sort of hinted at some ways to categorize them. And I'm doing what sometimes scholars do when they come to a subject that they haven't seen addressed before. You come up with your own categories and leave them subject to further revision. So these, I came up with three of my ideas for categories, and they are subject to further revision. The first one I'd mention would be, or the first one I want to point out would be teachings that are derived from, or we could say teachings that are smaller parts of more fundamental teachings. You know, we have some big, important things, and then there are sub-points of those. And I'm saying these as definitely based on Scripture. They are part of God's law, but as I said, maybe smaller parts of bigger, more fundamental teachings. For example, the Passover ceremony. We believe the Passover ceremony commemorates the sacrifice of Jesus Christ to pay for the sins of all mankind. That's pretty fundamental. It's central to our understanding of God's plan. It has a chapter in the book, the Passover ceremony. It identifies us as the true Church. It's one of the things that identifies us. But let's branch down a little smaller. Who participates in the Passover? Well, in ancient Israel, only those families whose men were circumcised could participate in the Passover.

In the Church, it's a doctrine that only baptized members of the Church participate in the Passover. Now, we think this is of vital importance. The Apostle Paul wrote in his epistle to the Corinthians that taking the Passover in an unworthy manner could lead to damnation. So, and I would say, taking the Passover if you're not baptized would be taken in an unworthy manner. So that makes it of vital importance.

And we base this on Scripture. Not just opinion, not just, well, who do we think ought to be at the Passover? Well, I think only if they're baptized. Are you sure? No, matter of fact, I'm not going to turn there, but if you want to reference Exodus 12, verses 43 and 44 is where it mentions only if the men and the family are circumcised, do they participate in the Passover.

Try saying that three times fast. And Colossians 2, verses 11 and 12 is one of the best statements in the New Testament showing that baptism now has taken the place of circumcision as that delineating factor. And since women can be baptized as well as men, now it's not just if the men and the family are circumcised, and it's not if the men and the family are baptized. Now it's an individual thing, because there's neither Jew nor Greek, there's neither slave nor free, neither male nor female. We're all the same before Jesus Christ, so men and women need to be baptized. As I was saying, I would call this teaching a non-fundamental doctrine, not an unimportant doctrine, and not trivial, but it's a part of a larger doctrine, the teaching that only baptized members take to Passover.

So I wanted to use that as an illustration, partly to show that I'm not trying to denigrate any doctrine if I call it not fundamental, because any doctrine that could bring on damnation by doing it wrong is not trivial, it's not unimportant, but it might not necessarily be fundamental.

Let's look at another one. We'll get into a little more scripture of this one. In the Old Testament, God established the Levitical priesthood, and then he set up a civil government, first through a series of Judges and later Kings. And despite the fact that God gave Israel pretty thorough instruction in how to worship him, and also pretty thorough instruction in how to regulate society. He gave basically laws, say, this is what you do, and here's the punishment.

But he noted that there would still be questions come up. There would be doubts. And for such time, God delegated authority to the priests and the judge or the king to make binding judgments.

So that's the second area that I want to refer to as possibly not fundamental doctrines, are binding judgments. These would be based on God's law, but not necessarily a part of it. If you will, turn with me to Deuteronomy 17. Deuteronomy 17, I'll begin in verse 8.

I have to ask you to bear with me. My voice is a little rough. I'm not sure what it was. I had some type of respiratory infection come up on me, and I thought that I lost my voice during camp, and it came back, and then last week it just about disappeared again. It really relegated me to staying at home and not talking a lot. I've been trying to save it up.

So let's read in chapter 17, verse 8, to show where some of this authority comes from. It says, If a matter arises, which is too hard for you to judge, meaning you as the individual, common Joe Israelite out on the street, too hard for you to judge between degrees of guilt for bloodshed, between one judgment or another, or between one punishment or another, matters of controversy within your gates, then arise and go to the place which the eternal your God chooses, and you'll come to the priests, the Levites, and to the judge there in those days, and inquire of them, and they'll pronounce upon you a sentence of judgment.

And you shall do according to the sentence which they pronounce upon you in the place which the eternal chooses, and you shall be careful to do according to all that they order you. So he's saying, God gave those people a high degree of authority. You do what they tell you. And he doesn't say what they're going to tell you. He leaves it to them to decide. But in verse 11, according to the sentence of the law 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. And the man who acts presumptually and will not heed the priest who stand to minister there before the Lord your God or the judge, that man shall die. So you shall put away all evil from Israel.

So that's pretty serious. That's giving a lot of authority for someone to make a judgment. Now, we're not in quite the same situation today, are we? We don't have a Levitical priesthood. And, very importantly, the church is not a civil government. Now, we don't have the authority. If you break the Sabbath, we're not going to bring in and throw stones at you.

Now, we might try to teach you, look, God says to keep the Sabbath, but we're not a government that imposes penalty. But we do believe that Jesus Christ now is the high priest. He's taken the place of the... That's not coming out. The Levitical priesthood.

And we also believe that Jesus Christ, as not only high priest, but as the creator and ruler of all the universe, has delegated a certain authority to his church to make binding decisions. I want to turn to Matthew 16 to demonstrate this. I could have gone here first, but I wanted to read that passage in Deuteronomy, because although I can't say for certain, I suspect that perhaps Jesus, who knew the Scripture frontwards and backwards, maybe he had that Scripture in the back of his mind when he said this to the apostles. And they weren't necessarily called the apostles yet, the disciples. But here, of course, they were probably together, and Jesus asked them, Who do you think I am? And they came up with different things, and Peter said, Well, you're that Christ, the Son of God. And he said, Yeah, the Father has revealed this to you. And he goes on from there in verse 17. Jesus answered and said, Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, flesh and blood has not revealed it to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I say to you, You're Peter. Or, as we know, the Greeks said, You're Petros. You're a little pebble. But on this rock, meaning this Petra, he said, meaning himself, I'll build my church. And the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I'm going to build this church. It will never die. And I'm going to give you, I could see, maybe he's sitting in a semicircle. I'm going to give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth, it's going to be bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth, it will be loosed in heaven. Doesn't that sound a little familiar to what we read in Deuteronomy? He doesn't say what decisions there'll be. And we have to realize, of course, the church never has authority to overturn what the Scripture says. Jesus Christ didn't give authority to the church to say, well, we're going to start meeting and worshipping on Sunday, because we have binding authority. Well, we don't have the authority to bind something that God hasn't bound. But if there are questions, and God says, okay, a decision has to be made and it's not clear in the Scripture, okay, I've given authority to the church to make those decisions and they're binding. You need to do what they say. There is an example of this being done early enough to be recorded in Scripture. It's probably happened many times over the years. But when the New Testament church convened the Jerusalem conference, they came together to settle for once and for all that question of, do you have to be circumcised in order to become a Christian?

And, you know, if not, do any of the ceremonial laws apply to the Gentiles? We'll turn to Acts 15 to look at how that went.

And we need to remember, from our perspective, it's obvious what the answer would be. At least we think it is. And, of course, they did base the answer on Scripture, but it was based on Scripture. There wasn't a clear-cut answer to the question. If God calls someone who's not an Israelite, doesn't the Old Testament Scripture seem to say they have to be circumcised and join us? But there were some things, including direct revelation from God, that said otherwise. So I'm not going to go through the whole chapter. If we pick up in verse 13, we'll see that the church does come to a decision and make a judgment. In verse 13, after they'd become silent, James answered. James, this is the half-brother of Jesus Christ, who we believe was the pastor of the Jerusalem congregation. He's presiding over this meeting, and he says, men and brethren, listen to me. Simon, who we call Peter, has declared how God at first visited the Gentiles to take out of them a people for His name. And with this, the words of the prophets agree, just as it's been written. And he cites from Amos, where it says, after this I'll return and rebuild the tabernacle of David, which has fallen down. I will rebuild its ruins. I'll set it up 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. So he's looking to Scripture, saying there's a Scripture that shows the Gentiles can be called.

In verse 18, he says, known to God for maternity are His works. Therefore, I judge. Now, this is James making his personal decision, and we'll see later that it would be agreed to by all those present. But this is the case that church is making a judgment. He says, I judge that we should not trouble those from among the Gentiles who are turning to God. And by trouble, it means don't make them get circumcised.

Which, if I were a grown man and someone said I had to do that and I wasn't, that'd be trouble. So I judge that we not trouble them, you know, in that regard, but that we write to them to abstain from things polluted by idols, and from sexual immorality, from things strangled and from blood. Moses has throughout many generations those who preach him in every city, being read in the synagogues every Sabbath.

So the judgment, which is now a clear teaching, it is a doctrine of the church to this day. It's one of our doctrines. You don't have to be circumcised to be a Christian. And it's based on previous Scripture, but it answered that newly posed question that was newly posed after Christ's sacrifice.

And it's interesting. It also, he addressed a couple of other issues, not only about circumcision, but he said, well, what then do they have to do? Well, he said, by the way, we don't think Christians should eat any meat that's been offered or sacrificed to an idol.

I wanted to point that out because if you read through some of Paul's writings, we could say, you know, that judgment could have gone the other way. Paul goes out of his way in his epistles to say, you know, an idol is nothing. It's a block of wood or a piece of rock. There's nothing in that that makes the meat change. But the church looked at all the conditions and said, well, you know, sometimes sacrifice to these idols involves demons being present. And certainly, in almost any case, it could harm the conscience of the people involved. So we're making a binding judgment. If you know this meat has been sacrificed to an idol, don't eat it. As I said, it could have been different, but they made that judgment and that stood. And it was a good judgment to make. Now, on the other things that they said, you know, they said, don't eat anything with blood. Well, that's clear in Scripture and other places as well as sexual immorality. So we could say those judgments couldn't have gone in the other way. They're pointing out things that the law is clear on. But we could say, you know, whether or not, you know, you eat meat if it's been sacrificed to an idol, you know, we say, I would say even today, don't do it. But Paul did say, well, you don't have to ask. But I would say it's not a fundamental doctrine. Doctrine of the church, based on a binding judgment, not fundamental. Okay, let's look at another class. I want to go into more detail on each one of these types, but I want to establish three different types that I believe count as not fundamental doctrines. The third one is what I call traditions within the church. A lot of the way we do things on a regular basis are not based on Scripture, sometimes even at all, or only tangentially. And sometimes not on a binding judgment, but on custom, on tradition. Now, these practices are almost always very good. You know, there aren't any that I can think of saying, oh, I sure wish we didn't do that, but it's tradition, so we're stuck with it. No, they're good and often very necessary, but they might not necessarily be permanent and have to be that way. Let's look at a couple of Scriptures, though, to remind us that tradition has an important role and has, going back to the first century, if we go to 1 Corinthians 11 and verse 2.

I have to remind myself I've got plenty of time here. I don't have to rush that much. 1 Corinthians 11 and verse 2 says, Now I praise you, brethren, that you remember me in all things, and keep the traditions just as I delivered them to you. So keep these traditions. Don't go messing with them. Likewise, if you flip over to 2 Thessalonians. 2 Thessalonians 2 and verse 15. Sorry, I added that one in. I had to be able to read my writing.

Similar statement here. Only that's not the one I want.

Oh, yes it is. Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions which you were taught, whether by word or by our epistle. So it's good when we're taught traditions to hold on to those and make good use of them.

Now, I'm going to focus a little bit more on some things we do by tradition later in the sermon. So I'll just give what I think is a fairly quick and easy example. One, we believe, and I would call this one a binding judgment, we believe that we should conduct a ceremony of the blessing of little children. Why do we believe that? Well, we've got an example. Jesus Christ did it. And it seemed like a great thing to do. Now, there's not a command for us to do that, is there?

He didn't say, no, I've done this, and it's interesting, with the foot washing, remember He said, you know, basically He said, you should do this too. Follow this example that I've set for you. After He did the blessing of little children, I don't remember in the Scripture where He said, you should do this because it's a good example. But we see it as a good example. And so the church has decided we will do this.

So that's sort of a... And by the way, the best rendering of that, or one of the best renderings is in Mark 10, verses 13-16. I'm not going to go read that, but you remember basically some people brought little children to Christ so we would bless them, and the apostles would say, get them away from here, He's busy. And He said, no, bring the little children. He took them up in His arms and He blessed them.

So we've decided we want to do this. But when should we do it? How should we do it? That's something that we've established by tradition. And that tradition has changed. For many years, and this is even before my time, but because traditions have their own history, we know that for many years the tradition was, during the Feast of Tabernacles, there would be one service where they would bring the little children, usually those who were born in that year, and they would be blessed as part of that service. And that'd be a special ceremony. Now, we don't look to the Bible to see, you know, there's nothing that says Jesus Christ did that during the feast.

Actually, I was reviewing my notes and I thought, hmm, I wonder what amusing ways we could look at otherwise to do that. We wanted to emulate what happened with Jesus Christ. Maybe we could say, during after the feast, everyone that's had little children go to the home office, and you know, whoever the president is at the time, right now it would be Mr.

Cubic. And you could say, when he comes into the work that morning, as he's getting out of his car and walking in, bring up the little children. And then you'd have to have others in the work, like Mr. Eddington and Mr. Stiver out there saying, don't bother him, he's busy! And Mr. Eddington said, no, no, bring him up. I'm not sure if Mr. Cubic probably wouldn't be comfortable with me putting him in the role of Jesus Christ. But then again, we put each one of our pastors in that role, because now we changed our tradition.

It became unwieldy to bless all the little children during the feast. So we said, okay, let's have a new tradition. We'll set the second Sabbath after the Feast of Tabernacles, for the Sabbath when we do the blessing. And we advertise it, we let everyone know, and we say, it's our tradition. We want to bless the little children. It's interesting, what happens if you don't bring your child? Are you cursed? I mean, I wouldn't say it's a sin, but then I said, well, why wouldn't you want to?

But we made an adjustment in the tradition. That tradition's been in place for years, and it's funny, I always thought that, oh, I would certainly do that. But then, some years ago, they said, you know, there are some times when people want to have the grandparents present. Or, there might be some circumstances where doing it, that second Sabbath after the Feast isn't convenient, we want the tradition to be flexible enough to do otherwise. So we said, if you want to make other arrangements, that fits within the tradition of the Church.

And I'm very cognizant of it, because Sue and I did exactly that. We said, we want to fit the tradition, but after Connor was born, we said, you know, what would be really cool is to have the elder who married us, and also who did the blessing of little children on Sue when she was a little girl. And so we said, Mr. Ed Smith is available. He did those. It would be great to have him ask the blessing on Connor.

So what we did is, instead of waiting until the second Sabbath after the Feast, we made arrangements to meet him at the home office that winter, and he came in. You know, it's one of my fond memories of being able to do that. So there's flexibility in a tradition.

Now, if I said, boy, I'd like to keep the Passover on a different time, because I want to do it with a certain minister. No, that doesn't fly, you know. So I said, certain things the Scripture says, you do it this way, this time, and there's no exceptions. But traditions have a little more flexibility. Now, I hope you'll see it's not my intention to in any way denigrate the traditions by saying that. I don't want to say they're unimportant. I don't want to say they're illegitimate. I think they're very important.

I just do want to say that as Christians and as members of the Church, it's good for us to understand why certain things are. You know, if something is said in the Scripture, you have to do it this way at this time, we need to understand that and be able to explain it.

If it's not for that reason, if it's based on something else, it's good for us to understand it. As I said, some doctrines are very fundamental and strict, others are not. Ah, my voice is getting a little thick on me. You can still hear me okay, right? Okay, so I want to go into a little more specifics. And I thought, actually, as I put this together, I realized I can start with one very fundamental doctrine and look at other not-so-fundamental doctrines that are based on that one in each of the three categories.

So let's consider first a very fundamental doctrine, or I'm going to set it up, and that is the Seventh-Day Sabbath. I mentioned earlier that for a lot of people who are living their lives and didn't grow up in the Church, that's the first thing they find, partly because it's very clear. If you read in the Bible, there's no exception, you know, there's no way to get around. It's the Seventh Day, that's the Sabbath. So a lot of people notice that and then grow and build on it. So keeping the Sabbath is a basic command.

It's one of the ten commandments, and it's got its own chapter in the book. It's a fundamental doctrine. No getting around it. But I think we could start to identify some other doctrines based upon it, such as, have you thought of this one?

When exactly? If the Sabbath is the Seventh Day, when exactly does that start?

I was wondering if someone would say it out loud, Oh, we all know, it starts on sunset. Well, I agree with you, but how do we know? How do we know? Is that a doctrine of the Church? Is it a tradition? Don't all of our calendars, our watches, our cell phones, say otherwise? They all say it starts at midnight. By what authority do we say otherwise? Now, I'll say if we were starting from scratch and left to our own devices, there are several points in a day where a person might say, This would make a good starting and stopping point. And I looked in history, it's been commonplace in ancient cultures to either begin a new day at sunrise or sunset. So, you know, sunset is one of the two that's the most common. It's interesting, Jewish and Muslim calendars have always set sunset as the starting point. I was surprised to learn that ancient Hindu calendars pegged sunrise as the beginning of a new day. And they weren't looking at the Bible, so they didn't have that. And I was really surprised. Now, the calendar that we use today is the Roman calendar, but it's the Roman Gregorian calendar, named for, I think, one of the Pope Gregor of sometime in the Middle Ages. But before that was the Julian calendar, which came in under Julius Caesar. The Julian calendar actually started the beginning of the day at high noon, which I think that must have been really inconvenient if you were setting dates in a calendar. So you can see there's a lot of different points. If we don't, you know, look to the Bible, how do we know? And I'll mention this. It was our modern need to establish constant standards for timekeeping that brought about the modern practices we have today, including time zones and starting the new day at midnight. And what's interesting, a lot of people don't realize that it wasn't the government at first. The reason we ended up with time zones and consistent timing was because of railroads. And you think back, well, that makes a lot of sense. And I guess in our modern society, have you ever thought if you would go back a couple hundred years, you know, if you did have a watch, which most people didn't, the way you knew time was in each town when the sun was straight up, that's noon. And as towns got bigger, they'd have a clock on the courthouse, and everybody would set their watch by that clock. Now, if you went 30 miles that way, high noon would be a few minutes different, and everybody there's watches would be set a little bit different. And to further, you know, so it goes as you move east or west. But when railroads were built, they realized, hey, we're running trains down these tracks, and we've got switches, and if we don't have consistent timekeeping, we're going to have a real mess on our hands. So the railroad said we need to establish time zones and consistent timing, and so they did. And later on, governments said, wow, what a cool idea. Let's adopt that.

And in 1884, Washington, D.C., hosted the first international meridian conference. Now, I'm sure a lot of people were booking tickets for that. And they made a number of international agreements, including establishing standardized time zones internationally. And they set standard longitude lines with zero degrees longitude being at Greenwich, England. And if you ever heard of Greenwich Mean Time, it comes out of that conference. And they established that's .0. And they also, at this conference, determined that midnight will be the start of the day from now on, for timekeeping purposes. And one of the main reasons they did that is if you started at midnight each day, all of the days are the exact same length. If you start a day at sunset or at sunrise, what happens is for half of the year, the days are consistently getting a little bit shorter. And then the other half of the year, they start getting a little bit longer, so it all balances out in the end. But they said, for business purposes, we want each day the same length. Now, anyways, this is all kind of an aside, but I like bringing in a historical lesson when I get the chance. But it's not bad. Do you think God disapproves of us following these standards for our daily lives in business? I don't think so either. But when it comes to obeying and worshipping God, that's another matter. God does not recognize the authority of the International Meridian Conference when it comes to the Sabbath. So where do we look to see when the Sabbath begins? We know the Sabbath, Seventh-day Sabbath, is a fundamental doctrine. But we want to go to the Bible to find out for sure when it starts. Let's go to the beginning. Let's go to Genesis. Let's go through the exercise of proving it to ourselves. Genesis 1 and verse 14.

As I said, I want to go through the exercise partly to remind us, we should be able to know where our beliefs come from. Not just say, well, the church says sundown starts the Sabbath. Do we know that? Genesis 1, verse 14, this is part of the Creation Week.

God said, So the calendar, God's calendar, is based on the predictable movements of the astronomical bodies. The sun and the moon and the stars are there, and their movement is designed by God to be used for calculations of that matter. Verse 16, The greater light to rule the day, the lesser light to rule the night, He made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light, and one to rule over the day and over the night, to divide the light from the darkness, and God saw that it was good. So the evening and the morning were the fourth day. We see that phrase a lot. It comes up in this chapter, verses 5, 8, 13, 19, 23, and 31.

The evening and the morning. I don't think it was a coincidence that God said evening first. I think He said evening first because the evening is when the day starts. But I wouldn't want to hang my hat on that alone as strict proof. Let's go to Leviticus chapter 23. We'll see some other places where it becomes, you know, beyond a doubt that evening or sunset is the time when a day starts in God's eyes. Now we know that Leviticus 23 is the listing of all the Holy Days. And one of those Holy Days in particular, we want to know exactly when it starts, and we're very concerned about exactly when it ends. Am I right? Yeah. The Day of Atonement. Because we're commanded to afflict our souls. And afflicting means fasting. No food and no water. If you've got to do that, face it. I don't think God minds that we say, I don't want to do it longer than necessary. It's okay if you want to. So when does it start? Leviticus 23 and verse 32. Actually, I want to back up. In verse 27, it says, The tenth day of the seventh month shall be the day of atonement. Okay. The tenth day of the month. But if we look at verse 32, it's still talking about atonement. It shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest, and you shall afflict your souls on the ninth day of the month at evening. From evening to evening, you shall celebrate your Sabbath.

Didn't we just read that the tenth day is the... Well, yes, of course the tenth day is, but the ninth day at evening, this tells us very clearly. In God's eyes, the ninth day ends at sundown, and the tenth day begins at that same moment of sundown. So it's very clear. I find it interesting, as I said, that delineation isn't made for the other holy days that I picked up on. But I'm guessing God was saying, they're going to want to know exactly on this one. They don't want to leave any room for doubt. When does it stop or start? And it's worth noting, of course, one of the Passovers is a time when people have pointed out that there's a little, perhaps, doubt or wiggle room. The word for evening, when he said, sacrifice the Passover, the Hebrew word, can be translated between the evenings. And you've heard that discussion. It doesn't mean exactly sunset. We take that to mean between the evenings is that time between when the sun goes down and it gets completely dark. If you turn to Deuteronomy 16 in verse 6, though, we'll see a little reinforcement. Because that is true, and what we do with the Passover is we start it after sundown, but before it gets dark. And because the ceremony takes a little while, it's usually full dark, but we start it at that time between the evenings. Deuteronomy 16 in verse 6, though, gives us both definitions.

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 he says, you know, at twilight or between the evenings, but at the going down of the sun. So we see sundown is the special starting time. Now, I would say, you know, some people still might want to argue that between the evenings. But as far as the Sabbath goes, if you're not sure, we'll start it when the sun goes down and don't end it until it's fully dark on Saturday night. And I actually put myself in that situation sometimes as a teenager where it's like, you know, I'm ready to go, you know, I want to go out and party. Well, I'm going to wait until it's dark to make sure I'm not breaking the Sabbath. And as far as when I had a job and would have to be at work, say, okay, I'm going to be out of here before that sun goes down. I'm not going to, you know, I'm not going to say, well, it's not dark yet. Well, yeah, but the sun is down. Sabbath is here. Now, I wanted to spend quite a bit of time on this, and I have, to show you could put a lot of detail and a lot of Bible study into determining and teaching a doctrine that's still not fundamental. As I said, it's not that it's unimportant. Keeping the Sabbath is important. And we want to keep every minute of the Sabbath and worship God on it. But the fact that the seventh day is the Sabbath and we're commanded to keep it is fundamental. The precise time it starts and ends is not fundamental, but it is a doctrine and worth us knowing why it is the way it is. I'm being awful intense for something that's... I meant this to be a little more lighthearted. Let's move on. We went to a lot of trouble to determine that by God's reckoning, days start at sundown, and thus the Sabbath does. That's fair enough. Now, what if you happen to live on a portion of the globe where during some parts of the year, the sun never sets? Now, that question is real. And it's one that's needed to be answered, and I can tell you. You can search the Bible if you want, or you can take my word for it. There's no answer in this book. It just doesn't tell you. So, by this, I want to remind you of that section on binding judgments. We read a portion in Deuteronomy where God said, if you have a question, go to the priests and the judges, and they'll make a judgment, and you do what it says.

And then we turn to Matthew where Christ said, I'm going to give you, meaning the disciples, the keys to the kingdom. What you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and what you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. So, Jesus Christ gave the church authority to make decisions on things where the Bible might not tell us. So, when does the Sabbath begin in the Arctic Circle? You know, a place where sometimes the sun never sets, and in other places it doesn't set because it doesn't come up.

I'm curious, how many of you have ever thought of that before? Some of you have. It first crossed my mind when I was in Ambassador College, and one of my friends brought it up to me, and I was like, huh, I never would have thought of that. And he was presenting to me the fact that the church had come up and they'd made a decision. And he pointed out, okay, this is the decision they'd made, so it came up. And there were a number of possible alternatives. As I was looking into this, I realized that I actually read an article by Samuel Bakkyoki, who is not a member of our church, but you might have seen some of his books. He's a Seventh-day Adventist scholar, and he wrote some books showing with conclusive historical proof that the Catholic Church deliberately changed from keeping the Sabbath on the Seventh-day to Sunday worship. But he also addressed this particular question, and I'm not going to cite his article, but he points out that there's more than one way you can answer it. And there are scriptural reasons you can bring in. The possibilities are, the three main possibilities, are that you could just fix a set time and say, okay, at 6 p.m., that's the start of the Sabbath. Because the sun's not up anyways, we don't know where it is, so at 6 p.m. it starts. Or you could, during the time when the sun's up but it comes down to the horizon and never sets, you could say, well, when it looks like it's the lowest point, I'm going to call that the Sabbath. That's a legitimate possibility. Or you could say, well, if I went far enough south, that sun would go down, so I'll go by the time that the sun does set at the point further south from me. Do you see each one of those as a possibility? Well, let me read. The United Church of God has a study paper about the beginning of the Sabbath. This is one I mentioned to some of the people. I'd written all the stuff I'd written about going to Scripture before I found that out on when the Sabbath begins, but luckily our study paper matches what I got from the Bible. They used a couple of Scriptures that I didn't bring in, and I think I used one that they don't, but they match up. But they also addressed this, so let me read from UCG study paper.

Members living above the Arctic Circle, which if you didn't know was 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 is no sunset or sunrise for about three months in the summer. There is no specific biblical instruction for people living in such an area. No one in the church can change what God has set, but in extreme situations like this, the church must make an administrative recommendation. That's interesting. I've been using the term binding judgment. In this case, they choose to use the term administrative recommendation. To adhere to scriptural principles, it is the view and recommendation of the church that a member 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. And it says the same principles would apply to individuals living south of the Antarctic Circle. Not too many people do there, only if you're on the scientific station on Antarctica. And in the next paragraph, 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 afternoon to end the Sabbath. However, we believe that this recommendation was arbitrary and has no relationship to the biblical designation of sunset at the beginning 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 to observe the Sabbath and the Holy Days from the sunset time is determined by the time of sunset at the nearest latitude directly south of his location where there actually is a sunset. That's more of a mouthful when you say it out loud. But do you follow me there? They're saying, if you went directly south to where there was a sunset, go by that time. It says, we believe this is more consistent with the biblical designation for beginning and ending of the Sabbath. Now you might say, well, who cares? We don't live there. As a matter of fact, one of my thoughts was, I could see where, if I'm saying there's different ways to do it and the church is choosing one, you might be uncomfortable with that. And actually, this came...one of the reasons I was remembering this, because when I was in college, is when the church still had the decision that the Sabbath would start at 6 p.m. And I didn't feel comfortable with that. I said, why wouldn't they do it at the time when sun would set if there were a sunset? And I said, well, it doesn't. But I had to acknowledge, okay, the church has the authority. Now my answer would be, if I was uncomfortable and it was going to affect me, my recommendation would be, don't live up there. Why in the world would you live in a place where the sun never sets for three months? Now, there are valid reasons for being up there, but I would say, if you're not certain, you're not comfortable with the church exercising its authority in an area, get yourself out of that area where you don't have to...nothing's forcing most people to live there. So I'm kind of in jest, but I wanted to show this, that where there's a binding judgment, sometimes it could be different. And in this case, the church did it one way and then said, no, we don't think we were doing it the best way, so we're going to unbind that and bind it over here because we think that'll be better. And the church has done that on a number of occasions, and you've been around a while, and know there are even more trivial things that we've had changes on, and some that are perhaps more important.

But still, such cases where the church makes a decision, there are doctrines. By the way, doctrine means a teaching and a standard. But I feel safe in calling them not fundamental doctrines. Okay, so let's look at an example of a not fundamental doctrine that's based on tradition. We'll continue looking at not fundamental doctrines that are based on the fundamental doctrine of the Sabbath.

And we'll say, what does Scripture tell us about the Sabbath? And we say, okay, you know, fundamental doctrine, what does Scripture tell us? Well, it says God created it. He created it on the seventh day, and he made it holy. And we know it's the seventh day. God's word says, keep it holy. How do we keep it holy? And I said pretty clearly, don't work. He says, assemble yourselves together. And it's good to add in Isaiah 58, it reminds us, we're to call the Sabbath a delight. We're not to be seeking our own pleasure and speaking our own words. And I gave a sermon on this, I don't think that long ago, talking about how, you know, we want to call it a delight. We don't want to seek our normal recreation and normal pastimes, but it's not to be a drudge or unpleasant. It has to be a delight.

So we could focus a little bit more on what we do than on what we avoid doing. The reference to Hebrews 10, verse 25, there is no 25th chapter of Hebrews, but Hebrews 10-25 is where it says, do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together. We usually combine that with the many places in the Old Testament where the Sabbath is called a holy convocation. Convocation means gathering together, you're called together. So that tells us that's what we should do on the Sabbath. We know what not to do, not work, not seek our own recreation. We should gather together. Okay, once we do that, then what? What do we do when we're together on the Sabbath? Well, it's not a stretch to say, well, maybe we should worship God. Since that's why we're together, it's a holy day. Does the Bible tell us exactly how to do that? Well, in the Old Testament, you came together and you slaughtered animals, and you sprinkled the blood. We're pretty sure we don't need to do that. So, since the Bible doesn't give us a clear command, let's look at some examples. Luke 4. Look at a number of examples to get some ideas. Still absent, and you'll notice all of these are recommendations or examples, but not clear commands. Luke 4, beginning in verse 16, we'll see Jesus Christ keeping the Sabbath and assembling together.

Here it says, So he, that is Jesus Christ, he came to Nazareth where he had 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. And he was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah, he opened the book, and he found a place where it was written, and it says the account that he read. So we see a normal practice, and our understanding is that this was a common practice for Jews in the time of Christ, because they came to the synagogue, and their services involved normally adult males reading from the Holy Scripture, and the Holy Scripture at that time was the Old Testament. It seems, and tradition holds this up, that there was probably also often teaching by the leaders in the congregation, the rabbis. Let's see an example of that, a couple examples in the book of Acts. Acts 13, and we'll begin in verse 14. Acts 13, verse 14, this is during the journey of the apostles Paul and Barnabas. And it says, when they departed from Perga, they came to Antioch and Bassidia, and they went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and sat down. So they're mindful, it's the Sabbath, I should be in church, is the vernacular we would use. And after the reading of the law and the prophets, so we saw from Christ's example, a standard that there was public reading of the law and the prophets. And then the rulers of the synagogue sent to them, they saw Paul and Barnabas, and apparently they saw, they had some way of noticing that they were trained in the law. You know, Paul was a Pharisee, he was a rabbi. So they sent a word saying, men and brethren, if you have any word of exhortation for the people, say on.

And I find that interesting because we might do some similar things. For instance, a week ago, well, like a week and a half ago, I got a message from Chris Rowland saying, hey, my wife and I are going to be in Kentucky. We're thinking of visiting a congregation and we'd be willing to help out. So I said, hey, I'm not going to Pressenberg, they're going to have a webcast, you want to go there and preach? He said, yeah. So it's similar to me saying, hey, you know, you've got a message of exhortation, go ahead.

But still, if somebody just walked in and I didn't know who he was, but he looked pretty educated, I don't know if you would take kindly to me saying, hey, fella, you've got something to say? Come on up. And trust me, I'm not planning to do that. So you see, but there's a little difference then in our practice from what was done there.

Let's go to a couple of pages over to Acts 16. We'll see that at least in some cases, even if they didn't have a synagogue built, a physical structure, the Jews would still gather and apparently read the Scripture, perhaps have exhortation, and prayer was a normal part of this. Acts 16 and verse 13 says, On the Sabbath day we went out of the city to the riverside where prayer was customarily made. This indicates that it was customarily done on the Sabbath. They gathered there. I lost my place. Where prayer was customarily made, we sat down and spoke to the women who met there.

So it makes me wonder if there weren't any men. Maybe that's why they didn't have a building. Only the women were there and they couldn't raise enough money to build a building. I'm just guessing there. But they did commonly gather. They did not forsake the assembling of themselves together. And they normally got together and at least prayed. As a matter of fact, it does lend credence because in the Sittinag, only the men would read from the Scriptures.

So maybe if there were only women, they just got together and prayed. But since Paul was there, he spoke to them. That said, our worship service has some things in common with what we've seen there, but some things different. Now, we don't want to look only to the Jewish synagogues of the first century.

Much better to look to the Apostolic Church. There's one chapter that gives us a clearer idea of what they did for services. In 1 Corinthians chapter 14, the Apostle Paul is addressing the Corinthian congregation and talking about their different gifts and how they were using them and sometimes misusing them. And he was addressing what happened when they got together on the Sabbath and wanting to clear up some things that he thought weren't quite right. And it gives us a little bit of a picture of what perhaps was happening there in their Sabbath services.

So 1 Corinthians 14, let's begin in verse 26. So, how is it then, brethren, whenever you come together? So this implies when would they come together? Maybe they had meetings other times, but certainly on the Sabbath day they came together.

So whenever you come together, each of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a tongue, a revelation, an interpretation. So each of you has got something you want to offer. So Paul says, let all things be done for edification. So everything should be for the good, for the upbuilding. He says, if anyone speaks in a tongue, let there be two or at the most three each in turn. Take your turns and let one interpret. But if there is no interpreter, let him keep silent in church. Let him speak to himself and to God. So basically, if there's somebody that God has given the miracle of being able to speak in another language, you want to display this at church, okay, one at a time, no more than three.

And if there's nobody that can interpret it, keep it to yourself. Don't make it part of the service. Let two or three of the prophets speak and let the others judge. That's interesting. Now, by prophets, we don't mean like the prophet Isaiah, where God came and spoke to him and said, give this vision of what's going to happen in the future.

Generally, in the New Testament, where it says, or prophesying, it means what we call inspired speaking, or hopefully what I'm doing now, you know, inspired by God's Spirit and speaking and teaching. But he says, you know, you could have two or three and let the others judge. It reminds me a little, we had a workshop for doing sermonettes earlier today, where several of the men got up and presented like an introduction to a sermon, and then I opened up for comments. You know, let me move on, though. I wanted to... Yeah. 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. And the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets. He's making the point, look, there's no... The Holy Spirit is not going to make you so you just can't stop from speaking. We don't jump up and start jumping around and, you know, he said, the Holy Spirit is so you can control it, you know, and you can refrain from speaking when the time comes.

For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace. As in all the churches of the saints. Let your women keep silent in the churches. They're not permitted to speak. But they would be submissive, as the law also says. If they want to learn something, let them ask their own husbands at home. It's shameful for a woman to speak in church.

Or did the Word of God come originally from you, or was it you only that it reached? If anyone thinks to be a prophet or spiritual, let them acknowledge that the things that I write to you are the commandments of the Lord. But if anyone is ignorant, let him be ignorant. In other words, he's saying, you know, if God's working through you, you should acknowledge that I'm telling you what God wants.

And if you're ignorant of it, yes, you're ignorant. Therefore, brethren, desire earnestly to prophesy. Don't forbid to speak with tongues, but, and here's the parting thought, let all things be done decently and in order. This is quite revealing. This gives us some insight to what we think church services were like at that time, and it's a bit different than what we do now. I've heard some people speculate that it seems like it was more like a spokesman's club than what we do, that there might be several people speaking in turn and having evaluations.

Now, that's us reading this and interpreting it that. It might have come a little different if we were there to see it. Apparently, different people would sing. There might have been more singing.

Now, this is not a commanded format. As I said, I'm not saying, oh, we're in the wrong because we're not having our services quite like that. In fact, I've tried to point out there is no place in the Bible where it says, this shall be Sabbath services. You know, thou shalt do this and thou shalt not do that. That doesn't mean that we don't have an idea of what to do. And there are some principles here that we obviously should incorporate because the Apostle Paul is saying, look, God's guiding me, and these are the principles that you need to apply. First, everything has to be done decently and in order. That principle should apply any time we get together and meet. Decently and in order. The second is, all had best be done, or it needs to be done, for edification. It's interesting. I think edification is a word we use primarily in the church these days.

But it means to build up. An edifice is a building, so to edify is to build or increase. So if we look at these various elements, as far as I know, God isn't giving anybody now the miraculous ability to speak in a different language, so we don't have to really worry about that coming up. If it happened, we could have two or three people do it, I suppose. But it's not much of an issue. Now that leads some other...or I also got a note here.

Prophetic revelation. I'm not aware of God coming and saying, you can tell the people this is what's going to happen next Thursday. So we'll dispense with that and see there's two other main parts of what Paul addresses that we do have.

One is singing, music. He meant, early on Paul says, each of you has a song. And we've heard Mr. Shoemaker speak about how music is an important part of worship service. And it's not only emotionally upbuilding, but carries a message. And we don't base this only on what Paul says here, but in the Old Testament and the Temple service, singing was a vital part, probably much bigger than it is now. The other thing that he mentioned was prophesying, meaning inspired speaking and the interpreting. Now, if we're not sure what prophesying means in this very chapter, we've got a good definition.

Let's look back to verse 3. 1 Corinthians 14 and verse 3 says, He who prophesies speaks edification and exhortation and comfort to men. So prophesying can be described as edification, exhortation and comfort. And I think he included women as well. They're allowed to be edified and exhorted and comforted. So if we ask, and we can look back to the workshop this morning, what should any sermon or sermonette accomplish? At least one of these three things. Edification, exhortation and comfort.

Now, there's different ways to do that, but if it doesn't meet at least one of them, we're missing the mark. With that in mind, let's think about what we do here in church services each week. And I would ask the question, could it be done differently? No. Apparently it could, and that wouldn't be a sin.

Now, by posing that question, I should ask the next question. Do I want to do it differently? Not at all. I'm very comfortable with the format we have for church services. It's the one I've known since I was 10 years old. For me and for most of you, worship services on the Sabbath consist of three congregational hymns, an opening prayer, a sermonette, one or two congregational hymns, announcements, sometimes special music, and then a sermon that's usually 45 minutes to an hour or so, then one more group hymn and a closing prayer. Now I ask myself, going into this, where did we get that?

Does anybody? Now I shouldn't say does anybody know this? I don't want somebody to jump up and give us this long answer. But my answer was, I don't know for sure. I really, I mean, it's been around longer than I have.

It's a tradition in the church and a good tradition. Let's not forget the words of the Apostle Paul when he said, hold fast the traditions that were delivered. I actually got out Mr. Armstrong's autobiography because I thought he'd said something about it in there, and what I thought I saw, I don't think it was there. He mentioned that when he first started the radio program, he set it up like a little church service and included singing in four-part harmony, but he didn't describe what he thought a church service was. I suspect that they organized church services the exact way he and most people at the time thought they should be.

So that's where I'll draw a little bit on some of my study of history to make some guesses at where it comes from. We do know that Catholic Church and the Church of England and some of the other, what they call liturgical churches, have different services than we're used to. They have services that are much more ritualistic and ceremonial. And I don't make a custom of going to Catholic churches, but any of you, I've seen bits of it on TV and movies.

They have the choir get up and sing, and they have wine and speaking in Latin, a lot of formal ritual and ceremony. When the Puritan Revolution came in the Middle Ages, they were called Puritans because they wanted to purify the church. They saw some of these rituals and said, we don't see that in the Bible. We're not sure that should be part of the worship service. So they wanted to cleanse the church. And they decided they wanted their Sabbath service, or they would do Sunday service, they wanted it to be less ceremonial and more educational. So they made an emphasis on educational services.

And that's what we have today. I was very surprised, and this is going back a few years when I was doing my graduate study, I was doing some research that had to do with Puritans. I can't remember what it was now, but I came across a description of services in a Puritan church in the 1600s. And I don't remember it. Well, what I remember it said, they normally, their worship service consisted of an opening prayer, two or three congregational hymns, a sermon that lasted anywhere from 40 to 70 minutes, and a hymn or two, and then a closing prayer.

I said, wow, that sounds a lot like what we do. The only thing that was different is they didn't have a sermonette. And that is, you know, well, I think our tradition draws from that tradition that goes back in history. You have to have service some kind. The United Church of God drew from the tradition of the worldwide Church of God, which went back to the radio Church of God.

And I'm not sure where it went from before that, but it is a doctrine in the church, and my pastoral policy manual, which I don't know if you knew that there was such a thing. I didn't until I became a pastor and they handed it to me, a big fat notebook.

But we've got an order of services policy, and it has guidelines. You know, it says, the United Church of God, we realize that the most important convocation of God's people is held on the weekly Sabbath. And it's our goal to fulfill the biblical teaching by providing weekly Sabbath services for God's people. And it goes on, it says, normally, a Sabbath service will utilize the following mode, and it goes through the description that I gave. It says, it's recommended, the recommended order of services for most congregations. We acknowledge the need for variation of this model based on demographics and the size of congregations, so it lists several possible alternatives.

And they're all models that you would recognize, you know, the 90-minute service, the Bible study sometimes in Lew, or, you know, various things like that. But I just wanted to point out that the type of services we have is not based on a scriptural command, but on tradition. It's a good tradition, as I said. Paul said to hold faster to traditions. I was in one of the pastoral classes recently, and Mr.

Holiday was commenting on ceremonies of the church and how we have traditions. He said, he reminded us, traditions give the things we do dignity, give them order. They make sure that we have a stability and a common standards that we maintain, which is nice, you know, for someone visiting from another area.

Now, that doesn't mean things could not be different. Sometimes they are, and here in Portsmouth, we have one we do that's different from most. And I say that, I sort of chuckle, because it took me, I think, the better part of a year to stop sitting down after we sang one hymn after the sermonette. And I'll be honest, knowing that I was going to address this afternoon, I was glancing over at the McGee's to see if they'd start to sit down, and they didn't. So we didn't fool them. But I chuckle, and we have visiting speakers, because almost inevitably, you know, we'll sing the song, and they'll start to do this, and then they look, and they get back up.

And the only reason I'm laughing is because I did that same exact thing. There's nothing wrong with doing that. It's a unique tradition. Well, I don't know if it's absolutely unique. There might be other congregations that do it, but in Portsmouth, that's part of our tradition. Now, as I said, why do we have sermonettes? You know, that's the tradition in the church that's been around for a long time.

And I should mention, if you attend a Baptist or Methodist church, what we call a sermonette, for many of them, is a sermon. You know, 15 or 20 minutes is as long as they want to sit listening to somebody preach. Now, there are others where they do have the longer formats, but, you know, so where was I going with that? Oh, I was just going to say, traditions vary with that. But it's governed largely by tradition. Who can give a sermonette?

Traditionally, they're done by deacons and elders, and that expanded to sometimes leading men in the congregations. The tradition can and sometimes does vary, and we did that a couple weeks ago with our Youth Day. But we usually come back to the tradition. Who can lead in prayer? You know, that question has come up. Traditionally, it's done by baptized men in the congregation. But that can and sometimes does vary. We love our traditions. They're important and valuable.

And they're an important basis for church doctrine. But the ones that are tradition, sometimes they can vary. Although, as I said, I remind you again, Paul said, Hold fast, and there's a good reason for that. So, getting towards wrapping up. I thought I was going to end early today. What's the point of all this? Well, again, one of the main points is we ought to know what we believe. We ought to know why. What's it based on?

We need to be in the position to be able to explain things. Some of our beliefs can be as simple as, The Bible says, Do it, and here's where it says, Do it. I love those. When people ask, Why do we do this? It's right here. There are some cases where the reason might not be so clear. But even if something is a not fundamental doctrine, it's good for us to know. Like I said, someone asked you the question like they did me. You went to ambassador. What did they tell you about this? I think there are some of those things we might look into.

As I said in the upcoming Bible studies, I'd like to look at some of those and explore the reasons and why some things have changed. One thing I'll mention, I talked about in Deuteronomy, where they say, Go to the judges. And the judges had to make a decision. You know, the time lies ahead in God's kingdom. We're going to be the kings that people will go to for judgments. How are you going to make those judgments? Well, you know, in our modern court system, a lot of times, judges, when they've got a difficult decision, they look at what's called case law.

They look at cases before them and say, Well, what did they do before and why? And that might guide me in making my judgment. So when people come to us in the millennium and say, We've got to decide how to do this, it'd be good for us to be able to look back at our traditions, some of our judgments, and say, Okay, the church in the past did this, and these were the reasons that might apply.

And that's going to help us ruling in God's kingdom. It can help us in ruling our own lives right now. We every day have to make judgments on what we do or don't do. So let's all learn and understand all of our doctrines, the fundamental ones and the ones that are not so fundamental, and let's all live by God's word.