When I was in junior high school, my uncle invited me and some of my friends over to his house for supper. For dessert, among other things, was a plate of figs. Yum! Figs and dates and raisins are my favorite dried fruits.
While we were eating the figs, one of the boys said to my uncle, “We have been studying about bacteria at school. These figs are sweet and sticky. I wonder if we could see any bacteria on them if we looked at them through your microscope?”
Now I knew that moldy cheese, food gone bad and stagnant water all had bacteria, but I was sure dried figs wouldn’t have any.
My uncle said, “Let’s find out.” He brought his microscope out and adjusted it on the table. Then he shaved off a thin layer from the outside of the fig with a razor blade. We all watched closely as he carefully placed the shaving on a glass slide and slipped it in place under the powerful scope. After looking at it through the microscope for a minute or two he said, “Come and see for yourselves.”
When it was my turn to look I saw two or three things that were moving. “Ugh! Who would have thought there were bugs on those figs?” I said in disgust. They looked like bugs to me, but my uncle said they were bacteria.
“Now, what has the microscope done?” my uncle asked.
We all knew that it hadn’t done anything except open our eyes so we could see the actual condition of the figs.
“Hey, it’s better to know the truth than to be deceived,” he said. “But by the looks on your faces, I think you’d rather not know the truth so you could still enjoy the figs!”
I have never forgotten that evening, and I sometimes think the Bible is like a microscope for us, because it shows us the truth about everything. It exposes the true condition of our hearts and the true condition of the world in which we live.
One of the things the Bible tells us is that by nature our hearts are “deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” (Jeremiah 17:99The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? (Jeremiah 17:9)). Then it tells us the other side of the truth. “The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:77But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. (1 John 1:7)). If you believe both sides of the truth that God has told us in these verses and honestly receive them into your heart, you will be washed clean from all your sins. This makes you fit for the presence of God in heaven through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and His precious blood shed on the cross.
Have you let God’s microscope expose the truth of what’s in your heart?
ML-03/22/1998