Traditions

2 Thessalonians chapter 2 and verse 15. Therefore, brethren, now there's a break in what he's really been taking up, but I'm just going to go from here and into chapter 3. Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions, which ye have been taught, whether by word, that means what he had written to them, or rather what he had spoken to them, and then by our, or our epistle, what he had written to them. Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God even our Father, to which ye have loved us and have given us everlasting consolation and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts, establish you in every good work.

Good word and work. Now chapter 3. Finally, brethren, pray for us that the word of the Lord may have free course and be glorified, even as it is with you, and that ye may be delivered from unreasonable and wicked men. For all men have not faith, but the Lord is faithful.

Who shall establish you and keep you from evil? And we have confidence in the Lord touching you that ye both will do the things which we command you. And the Lord direct your hearts unto the love of God and unto the patient waiting for Christ. Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly and not after the tradition which ye received of us.

For yourselves know how ye ought to follow us. For we behave not ourselves disorderly, again the same word, among you. Neither did we eat any man's bread, for naught but wrought with labor and travail night and day, that we might not be chargeable to any of you.

Not because we have not power, but to make ourselves an example unto you that follow us. For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat. For we hear that there are some which walk among you disorderly.

Interesting. Third time that we have it in this chapter. Disorderly, working not at all but our busy bodies.

Now them that are of such we command and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ, and that with quietness they work and eat their own bread. But ye, brethren, be not weary in well-doing. If any man obey not our word by this epistle, note that man and have no company with him, that he may be ashamed.

Yet count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother. Now the Lord of peace himself give you peace always. By all means, the Lord be with you all.

The salutation of Paul with mine own hand, which is the token in every epistle so I write. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.

Now it has been often said and pointed out that second epistles are often relevant to last days. And that is absolutely true. What I want to speak about this afternoon is something that has been thrown up to me quite often in the last two years at least.

And it is this kind, you've heard it too, this kind of a thing. That's just the tradition of the brethren as if they had nothing for the word of God to support it. You've heard that.

Overseers hear that. And there's people that I've heard that from that I'm surprised that they speak that way. People that speak that way are not reading their Bible.

I want to speak very plainly, briefly and concisely about traditions. First of all, I want to think about three different ways. Bad traditions.

Is there such a thing as bad traditions? Yes, there is. Biblical traditions. Is there biblical traditions? Paul says there are.

That there's scripture to support the traditions that they were turning their back on. Bad traditions. Biblical traditions.

And then beneficial traditions. Beneficial traditions. What has been traditional from, if you like, the early days of the church on down through the centuries, men that pioneered their way across this country, our country, there have been beneficial traditions that we have learned from.

You pay the price. Let's get it straight. You pay the price.

And I will pay the price when I turn my back on these traditions. Let's start maybe with the poor and go to the better side of it. But what are... Well, let me say this.

Traditions and habits, they are not the same. But there are two words, if you like, that are first cousins. They're pretty close.

When you think of habits, you're thinking of something more personal and individual. When you're thinking of traditions, you're thinking of something that's more general. Okay? But more than that, you know, traditions give to us our identity and to a certain extent, traditions literally plant borders, borders that can have a positive effect on our behavior.

Now, there are likely habits in your household that were not habits in my household. And there were habits in the home in which I grew up in that maybe are not in my home today. I used to think some of those habits that my dad had were a little outside the box, really.

But the older I got, the more I realized they weren't a bad idea. Sorry. I have to follow up with my family big time.

When I hear these ones ranting and raving about the way they were brought up, it was this and that, it didn't do me any harm. Sort of my dad did do things that you might have thought were extreme. It didn't kill me, believe it or not.

I actually survived it. Now, if I was to enforce that on my children, you know what they would say? That's what your dad did, wasn't it? You know the truth. It's absolutely true.

It's what he did. I spoke to a relative of mine one day. This is what he said.

Look, he says, Murray, I just might as well be playing with you. I am not going to bring up my children. Now, here's a man, the time I was talking to him was in his late 40s, a few years younger than I am.

I am not going to bring up my children the way my father brought us up. I said, is that so? One question. Do your children have the same respect for you that you do for your father? Never answered the question.

Do you know why? Because he couldn't. I'd love to tell you that things have gone well for him and he's still in the assembly, but he's not. Was then.

Most of his children aren't in the assembly either. So was his dad wrong? More than that, you know, the introduction of something that is new, and it's this expression, non-traditional. Okay.

My kids, in a joking way, said, would say that dad is a rut man. I'm reminded of a sign out in Alberta, northern Alberta, one time, in the spring. Roads are broken up.

There are ruts all over the place. You came to a Y in the road and it said this. Somebody put a good, not the Department of Highways, obviously, not the local township, put a sign up and said this.

Choose your rut carefully. You'll be in it for the next 25 miles. So you're going to get into a rut.

Make sure it's a good one. Going to meetings is a good rut, for sake of a better expression. Tradition, for tradition's sake, will stifle us.

Tradition, for tradition's sake. What do I mean by that? Doing something and I don't know why I'm doing it, that will stifle you. Legalism will strangle us.

And I'm not talking about either. But let's come to, first of all, what do I mean by bad traditions or bad habit. Let's give me an illustration of it.

If I am late, consistently late for meeting all the time, the Christians just get to know that I'm the last one in or I'll be late. That is a bad habit. When I go to an assembly at seven minutes before starting time and there's nobody there, that's a bad tradition.

Did you know what has happened? Bad habits have multiplied themselves. And I know where I am speaking. On two occasions, I've gone to an assembly, they weren't expecting me to come.

I don't know very well if they were. There might have been at least one or two there to save their bacon. And I'm there at, I thought, have I got the wrong night? No, I got the right night.

Nobody there. Come on, brethren. Then you would say, well, not everybody's got to be like you, got to be half an hour early.

What's wrong with that? Coming in time and quieting yourself and reading the word of God. That is a bad tradition. Somebody needs to break that.

A brother told me from the UK that came over to one of our assemblies in this country. It was Sunday night. He was flying during the day.

He had business to do. And he figured that the prayer meeting would be at half an hour before meeting time. So he planned his time accordingly.

When he arrived, when he thought the prayer meeting would start at 630, quarter to seven, there was nobody there for the prayer meeting. Finally, a brother come rushing in and there was two others. That was the prayer meeting.

There was four of them at the prayer meeting. And there's 40 in fellowship. Something wrong.

You know what that is? That is a bad tradition. Bad tradition. Now, I'm not, I don't know what happens here or other places, but I am saying, brethren and sisters, just as bad habits are easier to pick up than to develop a good one.

Know what it takes? It takes a little bit of backbone, exercise, and determination before God that some of those bad habits that we break, when they spread to others, they become a tradition, you see. If you were to go to, have the opportunity of going to the Labrador coast at any time for their conference, where I have worked considerably and usually do their conference every year in the fall. Brother Scott will attest to this.

If you went for the breaking of bread less than 20 minutes before starting time, you'd likely be the last person in. And some of them are second and third generation Christians. Some of them are new Christians.

That has become a good tradition. And good habits that have been developed by some in that assembly have spread to others. And there are others that it wouldn't matter.

It wouldn't matter. I remember one time, I used to like speaking in Stark Road. That's where they used to like me.

And then, you know, cars could drive in. I said, you know, some of you slept out there. If you slept out there, in that entry area, you'd still be late for a meeting.

Brother Jim Vallance gave me the announcements to make for Lord's Day. So I just backed each one off 10 minutes. So I'm up making the announcements of the gospel meeting, John Procopio and Irving Gosprings.

I said, I forget what the time, maybe breaking bread was 10 o'clock. I said, breaking of bread, 9.50. Jim was putting up his hand to correct me. His wife was pulling his hand down.

She got the message. Sometimes we need a sister to put it straight and pull a hand down. Now, just as sure as we have bad habits and bad traditions, so did the Pharisees.

And the Lord Jesus had to rebuke them on the same. More than once, even in Mark chapter 7, and you have it in Matthew's gospel too, in the Synoptic Gospels where he said, and laying aside the commandment of God. Now notice what they did.

It wasn't a case that they just decided, this is what we're going to do. Laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men. So in other words, something has to be laid aside before something else is picked up.

And what they laid aside was the commandment of God. For what? For the traditions of men. And the Lord went on, of course, to rebuke them in that.

He referred to their ceremonial washing of the pots and cups and many other such things like that you do when you get to Matthew chapter 23. That's why he said to them, do ye not after the Pharisees and after these that made broad their phylacteries and they put grievous burdens upon men, grievous to be born, they will not lift them with their one fingers, with their little finger. In other words, they were putting on people something they couldn't sustain themselves.

Said the Lord, bad tradition. Because they have laid aside the commandment of God for their traditions. For he says, now he says what they do can be right.

But he says, they say and they do not. They say and they do not. In other words, my walk should be in keeping with my talk.

My life should be transparent before all. I should not be a different person in Midwest than I am in the Maritimes. The ministry that I give should be exactly the same here as it is back home.

What I would teach here, I want to teach, the apostle says, so teach I in all the places. Okay. I'd love to say that that is done amongst us.

Away with this being politically correct. Because of where I am that I cannot do this. Now I realize there's going to be consideration maybe because of a very sensitive situation in that.

But I'm talking about general truth as it can be preached and taught from the word of God. The apostle writes in the Colossian Epistle and he goes over just the same thing. He says, beware lest any man spoil through the philosophy of vain deceit.

After what? The traditions of men. Traditions of men. So without saying any more, our Bible does teach us that there are bad traditions.

Let's go to some biblical traditions. That's why I read to you the second chapter. He said, therefore brethren stand fast, hold the traditions.

Hold the traditions which ye have been taught whether by word or our epistle. In other words, what I put in pen and what I say from the pulpit are the same thing. They have equal value.

So that when a man stands here and ministers the word of God as taught to us in the New Testament, it is God speaking through that man. If he is in fellowship with God guided by the Spirit of God and that's what Paul said because earlier in that Colossian Epistle he says, as ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord so walk ye in him. Notice what he says, rooted and built up in him.

Established in the faith. And as ye have been taught abounding therein with thanksgiving. Because he said men will spoil through their philosophies, traditions.

But just a minute, just a minute. I didn't take time to read 1 Corinthians chapter 11 but it's exactly the same thing we have back there. It's the same word that is used.

If you like, just turn back to it. 1 Corinthians in chapter 11 it's the word ordinance. 1 Corinthians chapter 11 verse number 2. What's the Apostle say? Now I praise you brethren that ye remember me in all things and keep the ordinances.

That is the word traditions. Keep the traditions as I delivered them unto you. And that word for delivered is a light companion word to the word delivered in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 where it is a word that is used of a courier.

Courier. Courier picks something up and brings it to your place. You want it in relatively the same condition in which he picked it up.

I got a shipment of gospel tracts one time and the operator of the forklift was a little too high and careless with the forklift and it went through a couple of boxes of tracts. Obviously, they were not delivered to me in the order in which they were picked up. Some were along the way.

Some transport company got careless whatever it might have been but there had to be a carefulness there. So just don't right after... I know you don't like I'm speaking to people here today and all I'm... You know what I'm doing? I'm strengthening what you already believe. You wouldn't be here if you didn't agree with what I'm hearing likely.

It'll just strengthen you. I trust. Likely some that would need to hear it.

They don't want to hear it. And that's why they're not here. We don't always like what we hear but sometimes that's what we got to hear.

So coming back now to what I call biblical traditions. That's what Paul is speaking of. In chapter 3 now we get to chapter 3. Notice he's not looking at this lightly.

You know what he... The main thrust of chapter 3 is this is a concern. Those walking disorderly were not working. Okay? They put nothing into it.

And you know invariably people have put very little into life itself or put very little into the assembly. But when people make the assembly their life then they'll put into it. That's what the apostles... That's why he's using... We command you.

We command you. And that's why I was emphasizing that as I read through chapter 3. Because that's what he is conveying to them this truth. We command you brethren.

Verse number 6. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that you withdraw yourselves from that walk disorderly and not after the traditions which you received of us. What's he saying? What you read. Those that don't want the traditions are walking disorderly.

People that have just thrown them out the window ignored them are unfortunately those that are walking disorderly. So what is a Biblical tradition? The breaking of bread. That's why we have the word ordinance at the second verse in chapter 11.

Chapter 11. The woman with her long hair. That is a tradition.

That's a Biblical tradition. The preaching of the gospel. And the preaching of the gospel don't reduce it brethren to what's going on in some quarters where a man stands in the corner with his power point dressed as if he came off the golf course and sisters profess sisters in their pants with no head covering rise up from the audience and ask questions to the moderator of the meeting if I could call them that supposedly to provoke interest in the people that are there.

Oh no, they don't call it the gospel meeting they call it the community hour. We have a church just outside our town and that's not what I'm speaking about. It does exactly the same thing.

What I'm talking about right now is some of those older men who we esteemed and regarded highly that poured their lives into that assembly ever knew that was taking place it would break their hearts. You know what I'm so thankful for? That they're in heaven they don't know what's happening. Oh you say that would never happen here.

I would like to think the same. There would have been a day when believers in that assembly would have said the same thing that'll never happen here but it has. It has.

So that's why we support our gospel meetings. That's why we go to the prayer meeting of the gospel meetings. Yes.

You got to leave a few minutes early. Yes. But wait a minute.

Wait a minute. If it was your boy who had no interest in the gospel for years and finally in his twenties he starts coming back out to just put yourself in that seat. Comes back out to gospel meetings.

You're not going to go to the prayer meeting and pray for him? I was at a having a series of gospel meetings one time and there was a brother there and he wasn't doing too well at coming to the gospel meetings. About my age. Grew up with him.

I said, let's have a little talk here. He said, didn't you post on gospel hall form the need to pray for... What happened to the prayer meeting? We're having gospel meetings. I haven't seen you.

Yes. He says, you know, I got to get going. I said, make it quick.

We're already in the second week. I said, I'm sorry. I don't want to use straight language.

Brethren, it's a no-brainer. It's just, I'm appealing to the logic of your thinking and your spiritual understanding. There are biblical traditions.

No one amongst us taught to us from the word of God. That's why in chapter 5 of the first epistle, which I didn't take that, read, read, he says again, now we exhort you, brethren. We exhort you.

Brethren, he says, warn them that are unruly, disorderly, comfort the feeble mind and support the weak and be patient toward all men. Now, see, disorderly, were not only those that were not wanting to work disorderly, were those that said, to do with these traditions. They are just the traditions of the brethren.

That is not a scriptural expression. It's not a bad one. We're known by that.

There are some traditions that we are known by. Yeah, there are. We meet together to pray.

If you don't know what permitting night is, ask your neighbor. If you've been enough, he likely knows. One of our good brethren back home, he told the story to himself.

I've heard it before. Oh, one night he says, you know, it's a 25-minute drive. You know, he says, you're never feeling good on permitting night.

So I just said to the wife, you know, went out in his yard to do something. And the neighbor called over him to him and said, hey, isn't this your church night? Good question. How are you going to answer that one? That's all the neighbor knew.

So he said, you know, I couldn't say it. I said, yeah, it is. That's all he said.

He didn't have to say anymore. I knew what he meant. How come you're not there? You're usually there.

You're expected to be there. So there are biblical traditions. I'm reminded of a time I was not in a series of meetings.

It was Peter Orszag that was in them. He told the story about, I've preached in the tent when he used to have the tent there in Markham and Unionville, Gospel Hall's front property there when they had room before they did the recent expansion there. One night, a big storm was coming up.

And as we do in tent work, of course, it was not safe for the people to be in it, especially when you got elderly people that need to be maybe wheeled back to home. They just shut the meeting down and asked everybody out of the tent and so on. This one night, there was a ripper came right through.

A thunderstorm came rolling right through southwestern Ontario, aimed right at Toronto. Brethren made a decision to vacate the tent. And they did that.

The rain was coming in ahead of time. The brethren were just getting people out, safely out to their cars and back over to the home there and Bethany and so on. And, boy, the wind was whipping that tent pretty soon.

Yes, sir, your main poles gave away. Then the side poles started going down. My boys are in the business.

I know how it happens in these stores from what they tell me. Anyhow, the corner, the corners, what they call the anchor corners usually are bigger than just the side poles. If they're using, say, two by fours, for example, on side poles, they'll use six by six in the corner.

Usually, the corner is the last to go down. They say, you know, it was so funny. The whole tent was flat.

There's one corner standing. That corner was whipping and the tent was winding around with almost really lift off from the stakes and going. One of the brothers said, hey, before that whole roof gets ripped and we're going to do a big damage, go out there and lay the corner down.

So the young brother said, hey, I'll go. Hey, be careful. There's lightning and everything around.

So he went into the corner, of course, where the fabric or the vinyl of the tent had wrapped around because my brother-in-law, his company had owned the tents and he went to grab the pole and there's a man inside there. Here there was a dear old gentleman, 80 years of old, 80 years of age. He didn't care what happened to the rest of the tent.

His corner wasn't going. And if it was going to go, he was going to go with it. Now insurance reasons and everything else, he should never have been there.

That's why Paul says, hold fast to them. Hold fast. You don't have to come up and tap them on the shoulder and say, things should hold fast here.

Storms on. Brethren, there are storms that come on in testimony, in the assemblies. What will make the survival of the day are those that are willing and prepared to hold to biblical traditions.

That's why the apostle uses that expression, I quote it to you all, often when he says, hold fast are biblical traditions. The word for holding fast is an old verb and it means, in English it means to have a masterful grip on it. Like your life was there, your life savings, whatever it might be, so important, so precious.

I mean, we let things go that are, I can get another one tomorrow. But something that has value to it, we're least likely to let it go. Biblical traditions.

More than that, he speaks here, he has in mind the preservation of the gospel. And brethren, I don't have to come this far to tell you in Waukesha or related assemblies, we lose our spirit in the gospel, we've lost the day. We have lost the day, brethren.

Okay? A young man I know very well that wouldn't gather with us in a different gathering, one of the men said to him this, keep it in mind. Calling him by name, he says, I want to tell you something. This man's older than I am and he's been there for a while.

He said, when the former gospel hall people are gone, we're done. We're done. He says, that's the only thing that's kept us going.

He says, where have we gone with the gospel? Down the road, the gospel hall have gone all around them preaching the gospel, not conflicting with them. I mean, some of them would go and some of them wouldn't, whatever. So we've been known by that as a biblical tradition.

So like I say, I could go over them, I'm not going to spend any more time on it, but there's many things like I say that are biblical traditions. Now what the apostle has here is the protection of the gospel. Okay? The protection of it.

That's why he uses the word deliver and hold fast. The proclamation of the gospel. Very important to Paul.

Paul wanted to preach in all its dignity and power. More than that, he wanted to see the progress of the gospel. In other words, for the gospel to prosper, the preacher had to be in the right condition.

But so do the people. So do the people. And that's what the apostle is laying before these.

In other words, men that were not prepared to go to work, were going to affect the testimony. Because people say, so-and-so, he's not with you. And it doesn't work either.

It doesn't want to work. Now I realize there can be conditions and circumstances come into a person's life whereby he's laid off and maybe has been injured or whatever, has got to accept help. I'm not talking about that.

I'm talking about people that have made up their minds that if they couldn't do what they were formerly doing, they weren't going to do anything. Now, I have to speak very personally and locally. They're dear brethren that got saved in gospel meetings we had.

And I love them dearly. But because of things happening in their business, one of them with a new big Western Star triaxial trailer for hauling logs, his driver, I think, fell asleep. 2016 truck with maybe 30,000 miles on it, almost written off.

So what are you going to do when the insurance company tells you it'll be three months till it is fixed? And I told him, get a job. Get a job. Well, the hard part, you'd have to actually go and work for your brother.

That'd be an awful come down when you're a boss yourself. You've got to go and now work for your brother. But I'm so thankful to hear before I left home, he's gone and he's driving for his brother.

God'll honor him for that. He knew this. Listen, he used to give out tracks and speak in the lumberyard, a big mill in our town.

He knew he couldn't do that if he collected from the insurance company and did nothing. How much more effective when he's even, I don't say it's a step down for him, but driving his own brother's truck into that same yard, he can still give his tracks out. That's what the apostle is talking about, is the protection, if you like, of the gospel.

More than that, he says that we might be delivered from unreasonable. Unreasonable. What does he mean by unreasonable? Unreasonable is the word for out of place.

The word refers to our behavior, as next it refers to character. Out of place. He said that we would be preserved from that.

Now I want to speak to you about what I have called beneficial traditions. What are beneficial traditions? Okay. Well, might as well say it.

As far as I'm concerned, what I've known to be the authorized version of the Bible, and its use among the assemblies in the 50 years that I've been in fellowship, has been a beneficial tradition. Are we clear? It's a beneficial tradition. For its memorization, we have men far more godly than we will ever be that poured hours into this book without the tools we have, without the electronic aids that we have, and have written books that we read and have benefited from them.

Has that been a beneficial tradition? Absolutely. I do not want to go to a conference and have to say, listen, give attention unto reading as the public reading of the word of God. I do not want to have to go to a conference or any gathering and wonder what version I'm going to take, or that I've got to take three or four because there's one here, he likes this one, then he likes that, then he likes it.

Listen, don't go to here and say, McCandless doesn't like any other version. I have nine of them on my computer. I resort to all of them.

Jay and Darby a lot. Okay? And some of the, those older ones I use considerably. I'll go and resort to them.

But you've got to admit that has been a beneficial tradition. Our hymn books. You see our little hymn books? Yeah.

When this authorized version goes, you can bury the hymn book we're using in the same grave. It'll have to go too. The hymn book that we use, look it up sometime, read about the people that wrote those hymns.

Godly people. Beautiful hymns. We haven't come out with any that I think are better than what we have.

Okay? We haven't. I've heard them. I've heard them sung.

They're all right. And some of them are not too bad. But I don't think they are an improvement over what we have.

Tell me, has that been a beneficial tradition? Well, what if I told you that my sister, hard, living a hard, sinful life, got saved in a bedroom when I was first in the work in a mobile trailer, didn't want to go out in the middle of the night to get her Bible, but there was a believer's hymn book sitting up on the shelf. She brought it down, got saved reading one of the hymns in that hymn book. I'm not saying that couldn't happen in another hymn book.

What I'm saying is these are beneficial traditions. Okay. The very way that we, now I know that Mr. Crawford in his book, I have highest respect for Norman in his book as well.

The way that we gather, the circle. The brethren could have easily said, ah, that's a lot of work, all these brethren. We'll just leave it like this.

But when you can do it, sitting in what we know to be the circle or the square has been a beneficial tradition. It keeps us focused on, not that we're worshiping the emblems, but it keeps us focused on what we are gathering. It has been a beneficial tradition.

I picked a young fella up one time. Of course, the boys, he was a relative of mine. He was actually going on a flight with me, him and two others.

The boys, of course, my boys said he was dead as soon as he showed up with father with his hat on backwards and his shades on and his white pants. He didn't have a chance. Likely, he didn't.

The hat on backwards was kind of cute. Okay? I said, listen, who started that? Wear the hat on backwards. I don't care.

You want to wear your hat sideways. It don't matter. They wear it anyway today.

Who started that? No one started before that. Anyhow, I said, I tell you, you can start something. Why don't you wear your shoes backwards? He said, I don't know.

Don't think I could get in there too good. I said, it'd be a nice thing to start. Maybe some others would pick it up.

Well, I should finish this story. Yeah, I know it's going on record. It was kind of a long flight.

Bad headwinds. He's back there tapping me on the shoulder asking me how long until the next stop. And I looked at the computer on the plane and I said, hour five minutes.

Ooh, he says. I knew what was up. You knew what was up.

No, we stopped finally. I'm not going into details, but it's very humiliating for the boy. But I'll tell you how he got back on for the next leg of the flight.

Hat was on straight. Shades were gone. I don't think his white trousers were looking too fancy either.

Sometimes you don't know. We got to face facts, don't we, brethren? Really. Beneficial traditions.

Absolutely. Brethren, don't give them up. In God's name, don't let them go.

Hold them. Paul says, hold them fast. See, that's what his prayer is.

Well, you say, but they're just traditions. No, he says. It's the Word.

It's the Word that I preached unto you. It's the carrying out of that Word actually becomes... It's a tradition, but it's based on the Word of God. So people will say it sometimes.

And when I'm coming back to the circle there, I know that it does say the Lord in the center. I know it says that they couldn't gather around and it's the thought of David being in the center when they sought for David on Jesse's farm and that. Those are good things, but sometimes it might be just a little hard push to say that we have to sit that way.

Unfortunately, a company back our way where I would have been very happy to go three years ago have decided that's no longer the way they're going to have the chairs on Sunday morning. So, they just put them just like you are here now and have the embers up at the front. I'm not condemning it.

I'm going to say this is upset a lot. It has done nothing for the harmony of the assembly. A sister sometime ago wrote me an email and she said, she's very, very concerned and a good sister.

Little assembly where they are, I'm not going to name it, it's in the Maritimes. And she says, while the offering bag was going around, this brother starts singing a hymn. Now, is there any verse against that? No, there isn't.

Is it really a tradition of ours? No, it isn't. So, is there anything wrong with doing that? Well, I know the young brother that called the hymn. I got a hold of him.

I said, listen, that grass out in front of that hall is high enough for a goat to eat. Why don't you put your big boy pants on and get them more and get it cleaned up. Get the place look right and maybe forget about your little hymn on Sunday morning between while the offering bag is being passed around.

I don't know if he ever did it or not. But I have to tell you, brethren, he's not with us anymore either. Why is it? Why is it? I've got to end.

Why is it that some of these things that are introduced to us by certain individuals in due time, they're gone. You know what we're left with? The mess. The mess.

I grew up in an assembly with an oversight. All of them in heaven that signed my letter but one. I still esteem very highly.

Come on. Some of you from southwestern Ontario. Mr. Forrester.

Hugh Garnham. Dave Warden. Men that stood.

Sarnia. Mr. Hodges. John Kimber.

St. Thomas. Burt Brooks. I could go down to Lakeshore, those assemblies, there were men there that stood.

Listen, they weren't perfect men. They had their faults. But they taught us the word of God.

What does the writer of Hebrews say? Whose faith follow. God help us to appreciate what has been passed to us and realize yes, there can be bad traditions but there are biblical traditions and there are also beneficial traditions. When anything is going to be introduced, with this I close.

I'm a little like the apostle. Starts his third chapter, he says, finally brethren, but he's got a whole chapter he wants to tell them about but with this I close. You be careful.

You be careful what you introduce into any company. By your dress. By your deportment.

By your language. By your living. And brethren, in God's name.

I know brethren say, Murray, we can't say a thing or he'll be gone. He's going to be gone anyhow. If God lays it upon your heart, pray about it.

And I close with this. Hold fast the traditions.