“Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called by your name, O Lord, God of hosts.” (Jeremiah 15:16, ESV)
Growing up, one of the great breakfast foods that I ate was cereal. My grandmother used to purchase these variety packs. They were small cardboard boxes with small singe servings of cereal. We would take the individual pack of choice and cut the side of the box open to make a bowl out of it. Then we poured in an appropriate amount of milk. We always chose the cereal that was pre-sweetened and if not then we would add sugar. It was a sweet meal to give us energy at the start the day. Spiritually, God has given us a sweet meal, His word, to give us the energy we need in life.
In this section of the book of Jeremiah, the Lord has pronounced judgment on Judah for their apostasy and failure to heed the warnings of his word. Jeremiah is speaking with the Lord and stated that he ate the Lord’s words and found them to be sweet to the taste. They filled the longing of his soul. They were the “joy and the delight” of his “heart.”
We see this metaphor elsewhere in the Scriptures. Ezekiel was given the scroll of God and told to eat it and he stated it was “sweet as honey” in his mouth. In Revelation we read that John was given the scroll, he ate it and came to the same conclusion.
The word of God is the bread of life. It is sweet to us who believe. The reason is that it contains the words of God. It gives us the words of life. In it we find hope. We find life eternal. We find the wisdom of God. It is sweet to us.
However, it is not sweet to all, just to us. Jeremiah gives us the reason that it is sweet to believers. He indicated the reason that it was sweet to him when he said, “for I am called by your name, O Lord, God of hosts.” Jeremiah was called by God’s name. For us who have believed, the word of God is sweet. It is the bread of life.
However, to the unbelieving the word of God has a different taste. It is bitter. In Revelation we read these words as John took the scroll and ate it.
“And I took the little scroll from the hand of the angel and ate it. It was sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it my stomach was made bitter.” (Revelation 10:10, ESV)
Why was bitter in the stomach? It is because the word of God contains everything sweet for those who believe, but it has the words of judgment for the unbelieving. In the book of Ezekiel, we see this as the words on the scroll were explained.
“And he spread it before me. And it had writing on the front and on the back, and there were written on it words of lamentation and mourning and woe.” (Ezekiel 2:10, ESV)
On the scroll were words of sorrow for the people who would reject the word.
For us who believe we have two responses to the word of God. One is to digest it ourselves. For to us it is sweeter than honey. It satisfies and strengthens us in life. It assures us for all eternity. It reveals to us the awesome promises of God. Thus, we should dig into the word of God, the Bible, as the precious sweet food that it is. We should enjoy our time in it. We should look forwards to feasting on its pages. When we digest it, the word will cause us to grown in Christ, to be stronger in the faith.
This brings us to the second response. We who have digested the word, have something to share with others. We have the words of eternal life and they are meant to be shared with those who are without hope. You and I were once counted with those without hope and someone shared the word of God with us. We found the word of God to be sweet and it changed our entire life.
Now we should share this sweetness with others. We must realize that not all will accept it when we share these words with them, but some will. Maybe not in your presence, but some will in time respond to the sweet seeds of God’s word that you feed to them.
Renewing the Heart 