 I saw a fascinating perceptual test on Facebook last night and it got me thinking. The test was one where we were asked to look very carefully at this photograph and determine exactly how many red dots are on this photograph. After people examined it very carefully, I'm sure that virtually everyone was able to determine that this is a photograph that has five red dots. What's fascinating is that virtually no one noticed that this person has six fingers on each hand. What's interesting is that when we become focused on one thing, we literally can't see what's right in front of our eyes. This is very similar to an experiment that was done in 1999 by Simons and Chablis where there was a video of six people playing basketball and the viewers were asked to determine how many times the basketball was passed back and forth between the players wearing the white shirts. After watching the video, most people were able to see and determine that the ball was passed back and forth 15 times between the players wearing the white shirts. But what the experimenters determined and what they discovered was incredibly only half of the viewers noticed that in the middle of this video, someone wearing a gorilla costume, a full gorilla costume walked onto the middle of the court, paused, beat their chest and then walked off the court. They were on the video for nine seconds and yet because people were so focused in terms of trying to see how many times the ball was being passed back and forth, they literally did not see something that was very unusual that took place right in front of their own eyes. It's this kind of inattentional blindness that impacts and affects many people when they're reading the Bible. I like to describe this as people who read the Bible wearing Jesus' glasses. As we know if you wear red glasses, everything looks red. Mark Twain once said that to the person with the hammer, everything looks like a nail. And so to the person wearing Jesus' glasses, all they see when they read the Bible is Jesus. So they might read the prophet Zechariah, Zechariah chapter 13 verse 6, where it speaks about the one who has wounds in their hands and the person with the Jesus' glasses says, you see, I see Jesus in this passage. Until you point out to them that chapter 13 in the prophet Zechariah is describing the fate of what will happen to false prophets. And then they insist, oh, this cannot be referring to Jesus. Or people who read the Bible with Jesus' glasses and they see in Exodus chapter 12 verse 46 where it says that none of its bones shall be broken. And they say, you see here another passage which speaks clearly about Jesus because none of his bones were broken by the Romans as he hung on the cross. And yet when you read this chapter very, very simply and superficially, it's very clearly speaking about the Passover lamb, the Passover sacrifice that was brought every year by the Jewish people during the holiday of Passover. Or chapter 21 of the Book of Numbers where it says that Moses built a copper snake, a brass snake, and held it up and all the Jewish people who were bitten by poisonous snakes if they would only look at this copper snake they would be healed. And people with their Jesus' glasses insisting that copper snake really is speaking about Jesus who is held up for us to look to. And yet again ignoring the fact that this chapter in Numbers has nothing to do with the Messiah. What happens when people have this kind of focused inattentional blindness where they're so focused on seeing unfortunately what's not in the Bible they miss what's really clearly and evidently there right in front of their own eyes. So the Bible for example describes God as being one, not God as having three parts. The Bible speaks about the fact that the Torah, the covenant he made with the Jewish people is the source of all our spiritual blessing. It's sweeter than honey, it's more precious than gold. And it's eternal and that we're able to keep this and yet people are able to read the Bible and not see that. They read the Bible and not able to see the fact that the Bible tells us we're able to receive forgiveness for our sins by simply turning away from our sins and turning back to God and repenting of our sins somehow people are not able to see the dozens and dozens and dozens of clear passages in the Bible that describe this process. People that are reading their Bibles not seeing the fact that it describes the covenant that God made with his people, the Jewish people, the nation of Israel, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob not seeing the fact that the Bible describes this covenant as an eternal one that will never be broken and that God will never replace his chosen people. And so we see that human beings have this incredible propensity to somehow when they're focused in the direction that they want to be focused in not to see what's right there in front of their very eyes.