In today’s episode, I want to talk about the importance of following the Bible rather than following Christian tradition.
In May of 1978, I put my faith in Jesus for the forgiveness of sins. I was twenty-one years old. Today, I’m sixty-seven years old. For the past forty-five years, I’ve been on an incredible journey of faith during which I’ve discovered incredible spiritual truths. Some of these truths are well-known and believed by millions of Christians around the world, but—and this is the main point of what I want to share with you today—some truths I’ve learned are a little unorthodox. They are truths that many Christians do not believe. To be honest, my journey of faith has led me outside the mainstream of evangelical Christianity.
The first time I discovered one of these lesser-known truths was during a summer-missions trip to Japan. It happened during the summer of 1985 after my wife and I finished our third year at Dallas Bible College where I majored in Cross-cultural Missions. As part of my studies, I was required to do a summer internship with a mission agency. So, Kathy and I applied to be summer missionaries with the Overseas Missionary Fellowship in Japan. After we raised the necessary funds, we flew to Japan to work with a missionary couple in Atsubetsu, a suburb of Sapporo, the capital of Japan’s northern island, Hokkaido.
During our stint in Japan, we had to rely on our own Bible reading to feed our spiritual lives. It was just me and my Bible. Every morning I read several chapters in the book of Isaiah. One morning I was stopped in my tracks by something I had never been taught in church or in Bible college.
The truth I discovered was not earthshaking, but the fact that it was a neglected truth, was unsettling.
I had attended Bible-believing churches for seven years and was going into my fourth year of Bible college and yet, I could not recall having been taught this basic truth. Let me read the verses from Isaiah that were, for me, a sort of wake-up call.
Isaiah 1:17, 23 “Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow. . . Your rulers are rebels, partners with thieves; they all love bribes and chase after gifts. They do not defend the cause of the fatherless; the widow’s case does not come before them.”
Isaiah 10:1-2 “Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless.”
Why was it I hadn’t heard this message before? Were these verses in Isaiah some sort of anomaly? I dug deeper into the Bible and discovered that Isaiah was not alone in preaching this message. I found that this truth—God’s command to care for orphans and widows—ran throughout the Bible, both in the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament. Perhaps the most well-known of these verses is James 1:27: “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”
Now you may think I am overstating the case against evangelical churches but ask yourself when was the last time you heard a message on Sunday morning about caring for orphans and widows? Sure, there are other more important messages. We need to preach the Gospel because only the message of the cross has the power to deliver people from sin and darkness. We need to preach the truths about Jesus—his resurrection, his deity, and his glorious return when he comes back to judge the world.
These truths and doctrines are important. We should not, however, focus so much on these doctrines that we neglect to help the poor. Remember, Jesus had compassion for the poor and so did the Apostle Paul. (See Galatians 2:10; Ephesians 4:28).
My main point is this: read the Bible with an open mind and allow God’s word, not church traditions, to guide your life.
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