Train your mental palette
In today’s sermon I am covering what most people, including myself, consider to be the most boring bits of scripture (although I hope if you go listen to it your mind changes a little on that as we go through some of them). The problem is that a lot of people would consider most of the Bible to be the boring bits. Some might even think all of it is. This is a shame.
With most things in life it is what you train yourself, to that becomes what is acceptable or not. Take, for instance, the weather. Around here we have had more “Winter” so far this season than we had in all of the 24-25 season, and “Winter” hasn’t even actually started yet. The schools have already had three snow days. Like many of you, when I was growing up we wouldn’t have even flinched at this “bad” weather. It was less than normal. But we have been conditioned to expect easier, softer, gentler “Winters”, so we are a bit taken aback when something real comes our way.
I am somewhat of a wimp when it comes to injury and pain. I have not had much to deal with. A few broken fingers, the odd stitch or three, an appendectomy. When my knee started hurting a few weeks ago it was a pretty big deal for me. A few of my friends, however, have had many major surgeries, major injuries, and prolonged hospital stays. For any of them the pain my knee was giving me would likely not have been worth mentioning.
When we say that the bible is boring what we are saying is that we don’t have much tolerance for anything less entertaining than an action movie or a YouTube short. But we can condition our minds to expect more intellectual input and less stimulation.
When Jesus was being questioned by the Sadducees, they thought they had him on some ridiculous technical trap. This was His response. Matthew 22:29 But Jesus answered them, “You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God.
In various places He asked the supposed experts of scripture if they hadn’t read a passage of the Old Testament which would have told them the answer to their quandaries.
Matthew 12:2-3. But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.” He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, and those who were with him:
Matthew 19:4-5. He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?
Matthew 22:31-32. And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God: ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living.”
I surely hope when I meet Jesus he isn’t asking me, “Have you not read?”