Hold Fast

The book of the Revelation, chapter 2. That's not revelations, that's the revelation of Jesus Christ. Chapter 2 and verse 25. I just want two little words here.

But that which ye have already, something they already have, hold fast till I come. So it seems to me that at least four out of these seven assemblies that John was familiar with failed to do that. They failed to hold fast.

Ephesus left their first love. Well who would they leave their first love for? Or what would they leave their first love for? I take it their first love was Christ. Wasn't that your first love when you were saved? It was my first love when I was saved, Christ.

They had a reputation, but there was a lack of reality. Then Pergamos, that was an assembly that lost its purity of doctrine. And the purity of their doctrine, or their teaching, turned out to be the dog's breakfast.

Now you know what the dog's breakfast is. It's all mixed up. It was like quilted theology.

You've probably seen quilts. And there's a little patch here, a little patch there, a little patch over here. That's like sitting down with a whole pile of books written by a whole pile of people.

And everyone has another idea. Quilted theology. I think Laodicea, well let me say something about Thyatira.

They lost their godly teachers. Laodicea lost right values. They were lukewarm in their relationship with the Lord.

So now I have to ask myself. You can ask yourself if you want to. How's my relationship with the Lord? Is it hot? Or is it just lukewarm? And how can we hold fast? That's really what we want to do, don't we? I think by realizing what we hold is very valuable.

The truth of salvation by grace. The truth of the assembly of the Lord's people and the uniqueness of it. That's what we hold.

And that's what we want to hold fast, I take it. The word of God is precious. And the men of old paid a tremendous price to write it or record it.

To preach it and to teach it. And to distribute it. They were persecuted for one thing.

Some were imprisoned. Some were even put to death. In an effort to preach the word.

In an effort to teach the word. And in an effort to pass the word of God on. To you and me today.

It's been passed on. And some men have paid tremendous prices. To pass the word of God on to you and me.

So I trust in the day and age that you and I are living in. It's not all bad. Some of it is.

But you know, I think we're living on the edge of the dispensation of grace. And the eve of the Lord's coming. And I find that a great comfort.

To contemplate, to think about the fact. Even in the day and age and the things that are going on in the world. And some of it is pretty scary.

The coming of the Lord draweth nigh. And it's probably closer than any one of us realize in the room today. The Lord's coming.

And he's going to come. Because he says he is. And he says what he means and he means what he says.

There's no gray areas with God. There's gray areas with men and women and boys and girls. But there are no gray areas with God.

So I trust that in the day and age that you and I are living in. Bible study isn't being set aside for computer generated fluff. And that's what it is.

Computer generated messages. They're nothing more than fluff. And they're very easily detected.

Do you know how they're detected? They have the smell of Babylon. And you know that Babylon. That's that whole amalgamation of so called churches.

That exist in the world today. That's Babylon. And that is easily detected.

I learned this years and years ago from a brother in Willmar, Minnesota. And he taught me this. That you can detect what's up Babylon because it has an odor about it.

And the only ones that cannot detect that are those that are flat nosed. The nose don't function. So they have no spiritual discernment.

Don't want to be flat nosed brethren. Some brethren are flat nosed because they were boxers in their day. We don't want to be spiritually flat nosed.

The Word of God is absolutely necessary if we are to serve the Lord in an effective way. That's individually and collectively. It's an absolute necessity to take time.

You say I don't have it. I don't either. So then I guess you'll have to take it.

And I'll have to take it or make it. Make time. Sit down and read the Word of God and meditate upon it.

That maybe is a lost art in the day and age that you and I are living in. I've asked myself a question one day. I thought to myself, how can the Holy Spirit of God convict the lost if I fail to declare the truth? If I'm not declaring the truth in all of its simplicity and brevity to the dear unsaved, then how can the Holy Spirit of God take what I'm saying and convict those that are lingering in nature's darkness and are strangers to the grace of God? You know the Lord taught the disciples and they in turn taught the people.

One of the things that the Lord taught them was to love the Lord. You know you hear that sometimes, don't you? Oh, I know that individual is saved. Well, how do you know that? Well, they say they love the Lord.

Well, you can teach a little kid to say that. You can teach a parrot to say that. You can teach a parrot to say almost anything.

I knew of a parrot one time that asked a fellow, what's the matter with you? There were two men sitting in, I think one of them is here in the room right now. And the other one's gone to glory. And they were sitting talking to this young man and he had a gray parrot.

And they were trying to present the Word of God to him and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And this fellow, he couldn't wrap his mind around that. And he'd heard that for years and years and years.

And still he couldn't wrap his mind around it. And all of a sudden this gray parrot says, what's the matter with you? So you can teach a parrot to say just about anything. I don't know how he answered this parrot.

I can't remember. That's something the Lord taught His disciples. And to love one another.

Do we love one another? Do you really love your brother? Come on now. And do I? Well, that's what the Lord taught. And then He taught them to love the Word of God.

Do you love the Word of God? It is really something, isn't it? You feeling bad some day and your hair don't feel right? Pick up your Bible and read the Word of God and things just change and life just seems to smooth right out. You ever get up when you're crabby? When you get my age, you will once in a while. Get up kind of crabby.

And though you don't have any hair, you might have a bad hair day. Pick up the Word of God and you'd be surprised. You really will.

Just how it just smooths life out so quickly. Makes it so nice. How about you love to worship? The Lord taught the disciples that.

The Word of God teaches you that. It teaches me that. You love to tell people about the Lord every opportunity.

You don't have to knock their ear off. Don't chop their ear off. Boy, when I was first saved, I was good at that.

I was hard on people. Take their ear right off. I took my mother's ear off.

She didn't like me for a long time. I don't know whoever put it back on, but then later on she started liking me again. She found out I was kind of likable after all.

Really, I am. You know, somebody told me years ago that love is the greatest quantity of truth. It's not a cage for every wind of doctrine.

That's not love. Love to witness. You know, thousands of people have been swept into the Kingdom of God through the witness, just a simple witness of some child of God just dropping a word in their ear.

And hopefully thousands more will be swept into the Kingdom of God before the Lord comes and calls His waiting people home. I hope we're not living in the day and age when technology and entertainment are more important than the study of the Word of God. We don't want to imitate the day and age that we're living in.

You know, the day and age we're living in is the day of culture. But we want to live a counter-culture life. Right? We don't want to live the way the world lives.

That's the culture of the age. But we want to live a counter-culture life. I heard somebody call that grunge Christianity.

The Christianity so-called that is promoted in the world today is grunge Christianity. We don't want to be guilty of grunge Christianity. Now without sounding negative, I haven't been sounding negative, have I? What we hold today could be lost tomorrow.

Couldn't it? The truths that we hold today, if we don't treat those right, if we don't hold fast, they could be lost tomorrow. Someone said, and I heard this quite a few years ago, each local assembly is just one generation short of extinction. One generation.

I think we need to be aware. We're living in a day and age when we should be aware. We have been warned this morning faithfully and kindly that we need to be aware.

My brother-in-law always told his boys, be aware. Aware your elbow is in relation to your glass of milk. Because if you're not aware, you're going to knock that glass of milk over.

And I think we're living in a day and age when we really need to wake up and be aware. We need to be careful as to the choices that we make, not only individual choices, but choices associated with the assembly of the Lord's people. We need to be aware.

We need to be careful about that. I think that what we hold to in relation to the assembly principles can be protected by appreciating the spiritual treasures that we have. They're wonderful.

And to teach the value and the uniqueness of God's assembly based upon apostolic doctrine to the generations that are coming along. We teach in that in our Bible studies in assemblies and so on. The value of the assembly of the Lord.

You know, we used to hear a lot about that, didn't we? Years back. Remember that? What we referred to as the old brethren. They weren't antiques, by the way.

They just got kind of long at the tooth. Most of them are in the glory now. Every conference I ever went to as a young believer, those men would get on a platform and teach the uniqueness of the assembly.

You know, I am very tickled to hear that as of late, we are beginning to hear more and more about the uniqueness of the assembly because we need to understand that it is unique. It is not part of Christendom. It is apart from Christendom.

I think it is important to watch and to pray and to keep our eyes open for the devil's traps. They're so subtle. You know, drift is real subtle.

You ever look out into a harbor and see a ship? And about two hours later, you look out into the harbor, you see the same ship, but the background is different? That's because that ship is drifting. And it is so absolutely subtle that you can't see it while you're watching it. And drift in the assembly of the Lord's people is the same way.

It is so absolutely subtle. It's like a snare. You know a snare is worse than a trap.

A trap will grab you and hold you. But you know what the snare does? It grabs you and the more you struggle, the tighter that snare gets. Tighter and tighter and tighter.

And there's no release. And no relief. So may each of us cultivate an appreciation for what we have in Christ.

And be determined to hold on to what we have. I'm going to mention something. I'm always mentioning something.

But I'm going to mention this because it's really on my heart. Of late, I have been hearing a little phrase that goes like this. The other place.

The other place. You know they say, out of the mouth of babes. Do you know where that statement came from? It was out of the mouth of an 8 year old boy.

And he reminded my wife... I don't want to give this all away, okay? I'm going to try and be careful. But he reminded my wife that he was going to sing a solo at the other place. Well now who's taken an 8 year old boy to the other place? As if there was another place.

That's what made me scratch my head right away. When my wife told me that, I thought, what other place? I didn't know there was any other place than God's assembly. That I'm narrow thinking.

I heard a statement come out of that boy's mouth earlier on, maybe a week or so before that, about the other place. Now in this particular assembly, there's not a Sunday night Gospel meeting. Do you remember George Patterson? Well, I remember George Patterson telling some brethren one time who were going to give up their Sunday night Gospel meeting.

Do you know what he told them? I'm going to tell you what he said. This is my words. These are his.

You can take it up with him, but he's in glory now. He said, you brethren are just lazy. And that's why they were giving up their Sunday night Gospel meeting.

They were just lazy. That's what he told them. I don't really know how they responded.

I got out of there after he said that. I ran like a chicken. I get away from that.

So now I'm hearing this phrase the other place, and I find out that these some certain people are coming to the assembly on the Lord's Day morning and breaking bread. And Sunday night, they go to the other place. Now I don't know what that other place is, but I'm assuming it's a Baptist meeting because in that locale, in that part of the country, there's a Baptist church on every corner and a casino on the other.

So it's obviously a Baptist church. I heard a man by the name of Billy Kelly one time. He was an old time Baptist preacher.

He preached with a pair of overalls on. But he did have a white shirt. And he said when he got saved, they give an invitation and he said, you know my foot just went right out in the aisle? And he said the other one followed it.

And I got to thinking about what's going on in this particular situation, and it's like having one foot in the assembly of the Lord's people and the other foot in the Baptist church. Well now, which foot is going to follow which foot? The foot in the Baptist church, is that going to follow the foot that's in the assembly? Or the foot that's in the assembly, is that going to follow the foot that's in the Baptist church? And I'm not a betting man, but I'll bet that the foot that's in the assembly is going to follow ultimately, eventually, the foot that is in the Baptist church because it's so entertaining. I think we need to really, really, really be careful with that.

And the other thing that kind of bothers me is that this situation isn't hidden. It is well known by the elders in that particular assembly. And seemingly, it's okay.

It's not okay. It's not okay at all. It is wrong.

You're either in the assembly or you're out. It's not an in and out thing. Whichever makes me feel good.

We're not in God's assembly to feel good. We're in God's assembly because there is no other place. Just the assembly.

We don't want to move away, brothers and sisters, from the truth that we have been taught because we have been taught correctly. And there is no need of change. Careful with change.

Seems like change happens, but it isn't scriptural. I'm not against change. Especially if I have no change in my pocket.

But change that isn't scriptural, that I'm against. And I'm sure that every fair-minded believer in this room is thinking the same way. Hold fast till He comes.

I don't think we have to hold fast too much longer. And He's going to be here. And we're going to see the sight and sing the song and be in His presence in a heartbeat.

Quicker than we could finish the song. So let's not move away, brethren. Remember Art Ward? I'm sure you do.

I do. I had something like 10 series of the meetings with him. And I enjoyed every series I had with him.

And God blessed in every series we ever had. And I remember what was bothering him more than anything else. And his great concern in that day was that we were moving away from what we've been taught.

Let's not move away from what we've been taught, brethren, because we've been taught correctly. The old brethren, by the way, young brethren, and I love every one of you, remember something, they taught us correctly. And when they were teaching us, the assemblies were thriving far more, and I'm not being critical, than what they are today.

I'm just speaking in reality. The old brethren taught us correctly. And they weren't perfect.

And neither are you and neither am I, for sure. But they did teach us correctly. So we don't want to move away from that which we have been correctly taught.

But that we might hold fast till He comes.