In Spirit and In Truth
A Series on Worship
#5: Traditions of Men
What if a first-century Christian happened to come into our assembly? What would seem strange to him?
• He would be surprised to see that the church owns a building. They didn’t have buildings in the first century.
• He would never have seen a pulpit or a communion table. These things seem so normal to us. We see this furniture and we say, "Oh, it’s a church building."
• He would marvel at our communion trays. He would look for the loaf of bread (not the matzohs or the wafers). He would think that the wine tasted a bit watered down.
• Our Bibles would seem strange, since he would never have seen God’s scriptures in a single volume. They had scrolls for individual books, but they didn’t have them all together.
• And songbooks! He would never have seen music written out before. Nor would he have heard anything that sounded like our songs. Their songs sounded more like chants. They sure didn’t have four-part harmony.
Is it possible that a few things have changed since the first century? Sometimes when we think of Paul meeting with the church in Troas, we imagine them all sitting in pews with songbooks and Bibles. It didn’t happen. I want to talk some about tradition. Whether we like it or not, we are a people full of traditions. A tradition is just an accepted way of doing things. It is neither good nor bad in itself. It’s just a way of doing things.
Some special worship traditions
• The “five acts of worship” -- we talked about these last week
• The invitation song -- that’s a tradition. It’s not in the Bible.
• The “magic” closing prayer -- a closing prayer can transform a worship assembly into a meeting of the church. You can do something after this prayer that you can’t do before. Can you show me any biblical basis for that? It’s a tradition.
• Congregational singing only -- you can have a quartet after the magic closing prayer, but if it’s before... sorry. It doesn’t matter that from what we can tell from the Bible and from history is that they didn’t always all sing at the same time, our tradition tells us that we have to do it.
• Removing hat for prayers -- we remove our hats when we pray to God, but we can sing the same words to God with our hats on.
• Standing up for prayers -- it’s a tradition.
• Ending prayers with “In Jesus name, amen.” -- Jesus did say to pray in His name, but did He say to end our prayers with this formula?
• Preacher raising hand and kneeling to pray -- You might want to argue that this last one isn’t our tradition… but it was 60 to 70 years ago. Church of Christ preachers, at some point in their sermon, would kneel and raise their hands to pray. Many still raise their hands when baptizing someone. It used to happen every time.
We have our traditions, don’t we?
Let’s talk about what’s good about traditions. We’re used to saying that we reject all traditions and that all traditions are bad, but that’s not true.
• They help us know what to do. If we didn’t have traditions, every Sunday when we came together, we would have to decide how to do our worship service. As someone said, that would eventually become a tradition in itself. We have the tradition of using a song leader. It’s a good tradition. It helps us to organize our worship.
• They provide a connection to the past. There is a saying that I love: “We are where we are because we are standing on the shoulders of the previous generation.” The fact that we can look at something and criticize is only because someone has given us the education to be able to analyze it. Traditions are a necessary link with the past. It would be very difficult to start everything over again. What if we had to decide again how to distribute the elements of the Lord’s Supper? We could waste much time in replacing something that already functions very well.
“Tradition is the living faith of those now dead. Traditionalism is the dead faith of those still living.” Jaroslav Pelikan, _The Vindication of Tradition_
Let’s look some at traditionalism.
• Traditions can bind unnecessarily
Mark 2:18-22
18 Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. Some people came and asked Jesus, “How is it that John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees are fasting, but yours are not?” 19 Jesus answered, “How can the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? They cannot, so long as they have him with them. 20 But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them, and on that day they will fast. 21 “No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse. 22 And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, he pours new wine into new wineskins.”
Jesus says, "Yes, you Pharisees have a tradition of fasting. But if you try to bind the new spirit of worship that I bring into the old traditions, both will be destroyed."
People say, "You can’t do that. We haven’t done it that way before."
• Traditions can discourage thinking
Mark 3:1-6
1 Another time he went into the synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. 2 Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath. 3 Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hand, “Stand up in front of everyone.” 4 Then Jesus asked them, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” But they remained silent. 5 He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored. 6 Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.
Jesus is asking the people to think. He says, "Yes, this is the Sabbath. But is it wrong to good on the Sabbath?" But they refused even to think!
Some say, "We don’t have to think... that’s the way we’ve always done it." When traditions keep us from thinking, they’re not good.
• Traditions can negate God’s Word
Mark 7:1-16 (Jesus is being criticized by the Pharisees, not about the Law, but about a tradition of the Pharisees.)
1 The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus and 2 saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were “unclean,” that is, unwashed. 3 (The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. 4 When they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they wash. And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles.) 5 So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with ‘unclean’ hands?” 6 He replied, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: “‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. 7 They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.’ 8 You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men.” 9 And he said to them: “You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions! 10 For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.’ 11 But you say that if a man says to his father or mother: ‘Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is Corban’ (that is, a gift devoted to God), 12 then you no longer let him do anything for his father or mother. 13 Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that.” 14 Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. 15 Nothing outside a man can make him ‘unclean’ by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a man that makes him ‘unclean.’”
Jesus said that they turned away from God’s commandments to keep their traditions. Tradition can bind unnecessarily, it can discourage thinking, it can negate God’s word. When that happens, it is traditionalism.
What must we do?
• We must learn to distinguish between tradition and command. We have no commandment telling us that we have to stand to pray. If someone leads a prayer while the congregation is sitting, is that wrong? No. It’s just a tradition. We have to be able to tell the difference.
• We must be vigilant to keep traditions from becoming traditionalism.
The Amish people are people that basically live 19th-century lives in the 21st century. They decided that all that was being done at a certain point in history was acceptable, and that all changes that came after that should be viewed with suspicion. I’m not sure why they chose the time period they did instead of chosing that of the first century. They chose a time and froze it, holding it as the ideal. Most changes are rejected.
We don’t want to be like that in our religion. We don’t want to lock ourselves into what the 20th-century church did instead of seeking to do what the 1st-century church did.
Let us not glorify the past. Let us glorify God! Let us use tradition wisely as we worship Him.
Jesus was killed by people who were angry that He opposed their traditions. Acts 6 says that one of the charges against Stephen before he was stoned was that he wanted to change the traditions. Traditions cannot be our god; we have but one God.
Brothers, if anyone feels the need to get right with God this morning, we want to give you that chance. We have a tradition, which is the invitation song. If anyone has a public need, they can come while we stand and sing.
