Psalm 119:103

The child of God has two natures, a physical nature and a spiritual nature.  The physical nature has the fives senses of sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste.  The same may be said of the spiritual nature as today’s meditation confirms.

Psalms 119:103  How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!

The psalmist speaks of his spiritual sense of taste.  The physical sense of taste cannot taste words of Scripture as it tastes bites of food.  The child of God who possesses this spiritual sense of taste finds a sweetness in the Scriptures that exceeds the sweetness of honey.  Hence, the psalmist describes God’s words as sweeter than honey to my mouth!  The word how in this verse is an exclamation expressing the degree to which he found God’s words to be sweet.  They were so sweet that they were sweeter than honey of which there is nothing sweeter to the natural taste, for “what is sweeter than honey?” (Judges 14:18).

Now every word of God can be sweet to the taste of a child of God.  Of course, God’s promises of eternal life, heaven, grace, mercy, forgiveness, restoration, strength, and help are sweet.  The prophecies of Scripture are indescribably sweet as they confirm our faith in God and His word.  They signal to believers that they have indeed chosen the right path for their life.  The commandments of God are sweet since they provide us with the guidance we need to handle the various situations of life.  If the commandments are obeyed we discover their sweetness in that they enhance the quality of our lives both for ourselves and for others.  But the curses of God’s word are also sweet.  Those curses show us a God that is faithful to keep His word.  If the Lord were to forego a curse He has threatened, then He might just as easily forego a blessing He has promised.  It is sweet to know that the Lord will do all that He has spoken.  Such a God is worthy of our fear and trust.  It is especially sweet when God’s words show us that those curses were borne for us by our Lord Jesus Christ so that we may be free from them.  And it is sweet to know that those curses will be heaped upon our enemies so that the evil they devise against us will meet with a certain end.  Any and every part of the Holy Scriptures is a honeycomb dripping with sweetness if we understand it in the light of the Lord Jesus Christ.

But observe!  It is the tasted words of God that are sweet.  You don’t taste food unless you ingest it in your mouth.  Neither will you taste the words of God unless you ingest them by reading them, studying them, and hearing them taught.  Furthermore, we discover the sweetness of honey by experiencing it for ourselves as we taste it and eat it.  So it is with God’s word.  As we experience it through learning it and obeying it, we find its sweetness.  As the old saying goes, “the proof is in the pudding.”  And experiencing the sweetness of God’s words, we can no more be persuaded that they are not sweet than we could be convinced that honey is bitter. 

Lastly, this verse gives you a gauge for measuring your spiritual health.  If you do not find the words of Scripture to be sweet, then you are spiritually weak.  Perhaps you are ingesting too much of the sweets of this world and too little of the sweets of God’s word.  If you find the words of Scripture sweeter than the sweetest this world has to offer, then you are spiritually strong.  The more you taste the sweetness of God’s words, the more you will want to taste them.  Go ahead!  Indulge this sweetness to your heart’s content.  Let yourself become addicted to it.  Of natural honey it is written:  “It is not good to eat much honey” (Proverbs 25:27).  Too many natural sweets will jeopardize your health, but not so with the words of God.  God’s words are very health itself.

Proverbs 4:20  My son, attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings.

21  Let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart.

22  For they are life unto those that find them, and health to all their flesh.

Considering the drag this world and our carnal natures are to our spiritual pursuits, I am not too worried that any of us will overindulge when it comes to the words of God.