Psalms 119:103

How sweet are Thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!

The best Christmas fare

I like this way of describing the reception of God’s Word as a matter of eating, for a man cannot eat God’s Word without living.

There is a reality about the faith which eats; there is a something there most sure, which contains the elements of salvation, for tasting is a spiritual sense which implies nearness. This idea of tasting God’s Word contains the thought of receptiveness. A man may hear a thing and, as we say, it goes in at one ear and out at the other; but that which a man gets into his mouth till he tastes it, and it is sweet to his palate, well, he has received that. Tasting is also a personal matter. There is no possibility of my eating for you.

I. I call your attention to an exclamation. The text contains two notes of exclamation or admiration. It is evidently the utterance of one who is somewhat surprised, one who has a thought which he cannot adequately express. The thought is also one which gives much delight to the writer, for he exclaims, “How sweet,” etc.

1. It is a matter of wonder to many to find the Gospel so sweet when the soul first tastes it.

2. This may also be the exclamation of a soul cheered by still tasting the Gospel.

3. I reckon that this language of exclamation and admiration will also come from the most advanced saint, increasing in knowledge of the Gospel, the believer who has studied the Word of God most earnestly, and who has had the deepest experience in it. Other books are soon done with, but the Bible is never fully understood.

II. Take the text as a statement, a cool statement of matters of fact. He never speaks more than the truth even when he is most emphatic, so that I am sure that David means to tell us here that God’s words were sweet to him.

1. They were unutterably sweet: “How sweet!” but he does not tell us how sweet they were. There is no describing the flavours of a royal banquet, there is no picturing to a man who has not the sense of smell the fragrance of a delicious perfume; and you must personally know the sweetness of the Word of God, for to us it is positively unutterable.

2. This much, however, the psalmist does utter: he tells us that God’s words are surpassingly sweet, for, says he, “They are sweeter than honey.”

3. He also says that all God’s words are thus unutterably sweet to him.

4. And at all times.

III. A repetition. “How sweet are Thy words unto my taste!” Well, that is all right, David; we understand you. “Yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” Is not that saying the same thing twice over? Yes, and intentionally so, because God’s Word is sweet to His people in many ways, and many times over.

1. As I have already said to you, it is very sweet in its reception. When we first take it into our heart, and feed upon it, it is very precious; but, spiritually, men are something like ruminating animals, they have the power of feeding again, and again, and again, on that which they have once received.

2. But do you not think that the repetition in the text means something else, namely, that while, first of all, Christ’s Word is very sweet to cur taste, there is another sweetness when we get it into our mouth, not so much for our own eating, as speaking of it to others? There is great sweetness about the declaration of God’s words.

3. There is a very special sweetness about preaching Christ, in the public proclamation of His Word. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

The Scripture as honey

I. Honey is exceedingly sweet to the taste (Judges 14:18).

II. Honey, if it be added or put into other things that are bitter, will take away in a great measure their bitterness. So when the soul is under affliction, temptation, persecution, for Christ’s sake, if God be pleased to add some of the sweet promises of the Word--how wonderfully is the bitter abated.

III. But notwithstanding that honey is so sweet and pleasant, yet there are some men who do not care for it. Sinners are so glutted with the filthy trash of this world that they loathe the honeycomb.

IV. Naturalists affirm that honey is of a healing nature, and serves for a great number of uses.

V. Honey is also of a purifying efficacy. (Anon.)