Devotional Mice And The Cheese Factory

You were created to love God and enjoy Him forever. To love someone is to know them, and to love them more means knowing them more. This should be what every child of God is striving for. Therefore, every Christian who wants to follow Jesus will be reading the words of Jesus: the Bible. But sometimes, when reading the Bible, we find ourselves reading something that seems to do nothing for stoking our love of God. A particular passage feels lifeless, devotionally void, and useless for following the Lord we love. Should these passages just be ignored or read through as quickly as possible? Was the Holy Spirit having an off day when He inspired them? Should we only spend our time where we get the most devotional bang for our buck? What should we think and do about these passages?

A Devotion Parable

Let me tell you a devotion parable. There was a certain mouse who had a strong appetite. This little mouse was scurrying around on the floor of a particular factory. The mouse wanted cheese. He was hungry, and he was searching. To be honest, he was in a great place. There seemed to be a lot of cheese to nibble on in many places. However, every now and then this mouse found himself on a giant piece of machinery. It was cold, steely, and intimidating. It looked like there was no food to be found and his searching would be fruitless. And so, our mouse scampered on. There were many places where he knew he almost always found cheese and those places were beckoning him to come back.

Let me explain my parable about devotions. The mouse is the Christian. He has a spiritual hunger and that is a very good thing. He is looking for cheese; truth that will feed his soul. And not just any truth, but truths about God, about the gospel, about eternity, about himself, about what God would have him do. The factory is God’s redemptive revelation, the Bible. So, our Christian is in the right place. It is in God’s Word where truth will be found and fed upon.

The Heart Of The Parable

What are these pieces of machinery? This is the heart of the parable. Those machines are cheese-making machines. It is within those machines that cheese is being processed and prepared for consumption. Should that be exciting for the mouse? Absolutely. In fact, eating cheese is made so much more enjoyable when you know that the cheese comes from a place that is able to make more. This won’t be your last bite of cheese, because those cold, steely machines never stop.

Those cold cheese-making machines in our parable are the difficult Old Testament passages. In the Bible there are these passages, some of them large, where there seems to be no spiritual nourishment, no truth to feed the soul and set it ablaze in love for God. These passages are giant pieces of machinery and they can be quite intimidating and frustrating for the Christian on the devotional hunt for something stirring. These are the genealogies, the sacrificial codes, the tabernacle details, and the various other lists that frustrate many Christians. These passages are the places where massive realities are being played out and where promise fulfillments are being detailed with staggering depth. For instance, the realities of God’s holiness and precision are utterly crucial. The atonement of Christ rests on these among other things. The book of Leviticus details the holiness of God and the precision His holiness requires. It is a historical machine that is producing a foundation for atonement glories. How about those genealogies? Genealogies are promises fulfilled. Abraham would have loved to read those genealogies. Genealogies are also machines where future promises are being prepared, packaged, and on their way to be delivered to the New Testament. Is it important that Jesus descend from a certain family? Absolutely! You scoff at all kinds of promises fulfilled and hopes secured if you disparage genealogies.

Changing The Way You Read Those Passages

Why are those passages so withering for New Testament believers? Because, these Christians are scurrying around with their noses to the floor in search of little inspirational tidbits, and these massive machines aren’t providing what they are looking for. These Christians aren’t trying to grasp large, weighty realities that will give them a massive hope upon which to stand. However, it is while standing on those massive foundations provided by those passages that you find particular devotional insights. So don’t turn your nose up at those passages. Sadly, many Christians have grown content with tiny nibbles. Machines are not things to nibble, they are things to marvel. Christians need to change the way they approach these passages of Scripture. Primarily, they need to stand back and bask in the grandeur of what these passages are. Take a wide-angle lens to these Scriptures. Try to look at them with the whole scope of redemptive history in view. These passages are vitally important. They are useful for teaching as 2 Timothy 3:16 affirms. They will occasionally have some surprising devotional gem embedded in them, but mainly they are producing big massive things upon which our faith rests. If you faith rests upon them then be assured that your devotions can be stirred in a different, yet equally important, way by them.