Alright, let's take our Bibles
and turn with me to the book of Proverbs chapter 24. Proverbs chapter 24. The way that the Lord was pleased
to teach when He walked upon the earth was to teach the people
in parables That's what Matthew 13, 34 says. All these things
spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables. And without a parable
spake he not unto them. Now, a parable in the scriptures
is when an earthly or a natural event or an expression or an
illustration is used or set forth to teach a heavenly message. It's precious truth that is related
simply to those who heard the Lord speak. Well, today in this
passage, the Spirit of God moved upon Solomon to do that very
thing. He's going to take the simplicity
of something that we can relate to and he's going to apply it
to our heart and our understanding that we might feast upon the
glory and the majesty, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ to needy
sinners. Now, we're going to look at Proverbs
24, 13 and 14, and this is what the scripture says. My son, eat
thou honey, because it is good, and the honeycomb, which is sweet
to thy taste. It soothes the heart of God's
people when we hear the Lord speak to us in terms of covenant
mercy. He starts off by saying, My son... Now, the Lord is talking to His
people. He's talking to us who know Him,
that have been given a heart for Him, and we hear Him say,
My Son, and immediately when we hear Him say, My Son, we think
about the mercy and compassion of Him who is our Father. He
who has loved us and blessed us in covenant mercy, with all
spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ, the Father,
who predestinated us. unto the adoption of children
by Jesus Christ to Himself according to the good pleasure of His will.
So He's talking to us as our Father. And it's a marvelous
act of God's mercy and grace and will that we would be known
unto Him as sons, daughters of grace and compassion made by
the grace of God to be members of His family. Deuteronomy 14.2
says, For thou art a holy, that is a sacred people, unto the
Lord thy God. And the Lord hath chosen thee
to be a peculiar, a shut up people unto Himself. Wealth is exactly
what it means. We are to the Lord wealth. I just, I think to myself what
a blessing that God would take fallen creatures as we are that
He's everlastingly loved and refer to us as His shut up, His
hemmed up people for Himself. Unto above all the nations that
we are peculiar people unto Himself above all the nations out of
all the nations of the earth that are upon the earth. He selected
some to be his. He said, you're mine. Job 43.1
says, now thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob, he
that formed thee, O Israel, fear not, for I have redeemed thee. I have called thee by thy name. Thou art mine. Now, when we stop for a moment,
and consider the blessing of being, of course, and we can't.
We can't consider the depth of it, I know. But just to say,
and not to say with a dead heart, but to say with some understanding,
I believe God. I believe Him. I believe that
the Lord has given me a heart. for Christ, a trust in Him who
is the Savior. And the Lord refers to His people
as sons, and He's given me a heart to believe that. I believe that
God has called me to be a son. So we hear Him say that we are
His son, and the reward of being a son of God. The Scripture says,
Romans 8, 17, if children, then heirs. It means you possess an
inheritance. We're heirs. Heirs of God and
joint heirs with Christ. Joint heirs. It means participants. Participants in common with Him. What He received, we received. What is due unto Him is due unto
us being in Him. and the Father having placed
us in Him, and He having loved us and redeemed us, and called
us by His Spirit, and we're one in union with. These things that
we just, we know them, we believe them, but oh, the depth and the
beauty of these things. If joint heirs with Christ, if
so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified
together." Now, we suffered two ways, actually, we suffered.
Number one, the scripture sets forth that we suffered with Him,
being one with Him. When He died upon the cross,
the scripture sets forth Paul the Apostle, bearing this out
under the inspiration of God's Spirit. He said, you know, I
died with Him. I died, I was with Him. When
he died, I died. We suffered, I suffered in him.
So we suffered with the Lord being in union with him upon
the cross. But then according also to his
promise, we suffer in this life for his sake and for the sake
of the gospel. God's people have promised that
in this world, you're going to have tribulation. You're going
to. We have troubles with them, we
have troubles with ours. We suffer, you know, seeing the frailty
of our flesh and it grieves us. And then where the scripture
says that we're hated of all men for his sake. Though people
may not outwardly always manifest what they think, but I'm telling
you, whenever you set forth that the God that you believe is not
the God they believe, then what they hear you say is that, I'm
not a believer. That's what they hear you say.
And they despise you for that. They look at God's people as
being arrogant. And the world and all of its
mixed religions can get along with everybody. Everybody gets
along with everybody else. A believer is the only one that
can't get along with everybody else because everybody else doesn't
believe this God that we worship. And so the scripture sets forth
that we're heirs of God, joint heirs with Christ, if so be that
we suffer with Him, that we might be glorified together. The apostle
John wrote years after the Lord had ascended into heaven of the
blessing that we shall have being a son of God. Beloved, John said,
you who are beloved of God and of God's people, now are we the
sons of God. And it doth not yet appear what
we shall be, But we know that when He shall appear, we shall
be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." Now, the world
doesn't recognize God's people as being sons of God because
really of our present condition and all the shortcomings of the
flesh. But according to the Word of
God, believers are nonetheless sons of God. And I realize that
we're incapable, even in ourselves, of beholding with perfect sight
and understanding also our present condition because of all of the
shortcomings of our flesh, too. But we're believers. God's people
know God. He knows them. And I know we're
incapable of understanding the misery and the shortcomings that
we see in ourselves, but it's a fact. Those that believe God
truly believe Him, not believe merely in Him. I've said that
before. Abraham believed God. There's a big difference in believing
God and believing in God. Believing that there is a God.
Everybody believes there's a God. I've heard people say, well,
he's an atheist. No. No. The scripture bears this
out. There is no such thing as an
atheist. There is a conscience that is born in every person. They've got a conscience of right
and wrong. And that conscience is an evidence
that there is a knowledge that there is God, that there is a
God. Men say, I don't believe in God
at all. Scripture says even the nature declares the handiwork
of God. And so the Lord says you're without
excuse. Men may outwardly say something,
but they're denying what they truly believe in their heart
according to the Word of God. So we know that we are sons of
God. Sons born of God, 1 Corinthians
15, 49, as we have born the image of the earthy, the earthy. And
we're looking right now at us, we're earthy. We have characteristics
of earth, of the earth. We got the way that we're made
is we're made in a way that we can live in this environment.
We've got to, we've got, We've got to have air. We've got to
have food. We've got to have water. And
the Lord has made us so. We have borne the image of the
earthy. Paul says we shall also bear
the image of the heavenly. We don't know what it is. We
can't perceive it. The eye has not seen it. We don't
understand it. But the scripture says we shall.
But nonetheless, we're sons of God, even now. 1 Thessalonians
4, 16 and 18 talk about the Lord coming back for His people. For
the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with
the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God. And the
dead in Christ shall rise first, and we which are alive and remain
shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the
Lord in the air, so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore,
comfort one another with these words. So back in Proverbs 24,
verse 13, my son, Eat thou honey, because it is
good, and the honeycomb, which is sweet to thy taste. Now, we've
said this before concerning the Proverbs. The Proverbs serve,
have a dual purpose. they do declare, humanly speaking,
that which is the right and honorable thing to do. Proverbs, I've said this before up top
of the Bible here, it says moral virtues and their contrary vices. There's not one thing wrong with
the Proverbs as far as I mean, they're good advice. But, if
we fail to see the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ in the Proverbs,
then truly we've missed the message, which is the Lord Himself. So,
the Proverbs are humanly speaking, they're right, they're good,
they're honorable. We know this. Here's the beauty
of a parable. Now, let me ask you this, if
this is not just as natural as it can be. My son, eat thou honey,
because it's good. It's good. And the honeycomb,
which is sweet to thy taste. I know we've all done this. You
get a jar of honey and you get a honeycomb and you eat the honeycomb. It's just like wax. I think of
paraffin wax. You know, that's artificial.
But the honeycomb is like a waxy thing. It's just filled, you
know, and they're made like that. The bees make it like that to
feed their larva and stuff like that. And it holds you. It holds
the honey there. I didn't realize how nutritious the honeycomb
is. You can eat it. I didn't know
you could eat it. I thought you'd chewed it up and spit it out.
That's what I always did. But no, it's very, very nutritious. So humanly speaking, the scripture
says, my son, eat thou honey because it's good, it's pleasant
to the taste, and it's nutritious. It's pure food. There's no human processing to
it. And the list I found of the nutritional
benefits in the honeycomb is just unbelievable. It's proven
for centuries. Y'all look it up sometime. Look
and see how good honey is. It made me want to eat some.
But the eating of the honey was even set forth by the Spirit
of God to be an example, an illustration that declared and proved the
humanity of the Lord. Now listen to this scripture
I found, Isaiah 7, 14, 15. Therefore the Lord Himself, Jehovah,
all capital letters, the Lord Himself, shall give you a sign.
Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call
his name Immanuel. Now that's normally where we
stop. We stopped with that verse right there. But the next verse
says what this son is going to do. It says, Butter and honey
shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil and choose
the good. The Lord Himself, being God,
The Word was made flesh. And He came forth into this world
just like all humans do. He was born of a virgin and she conceived by the Spirit of
God and she bore this son and they called his name Immanuel. And He came forth and He ate. He ate food. He ate food like
everybody else did, but he was the Messiah. He was God in human
flesh and as the federal head and representative of his people,
he lived and ate the diet of those that he came to redeem.
He was subjected to the natural wants and infirmities of manhood.
He hungered, he thirsted, he was weary, but unlike all others
that was born of women, he knew no sin. But when Isaiah wrote
that he ate butter and honey, it doesn't mean that butter and
honey was his only food, but it illustrates that he uniformly
refused evil, and always did that which was pleasing and right
in the sight of God. He ate pure. He ate purely. He ate right food,
butter and honey. He ate food, that's what I'm
saying. He ate the things that were healthy. But as far as him eating butter
and honey as a child, the scripture says, that verse I just read,
that he may know to refuse the evil and choose the good. Now,
the word know there, he ate butter and honey that he may know to
refuse the evil and choose the good. The word know there means
to know by experiencing it. He knew it. because he ate it. As a human being, he ate it.
And I read what some writers said according to that verse
of scripture. It said on that verse of scripture,
it says, butter and honey shall he eat that he may know to refuse
the evil and choose the good. Some said that that verse referred
to our Lord having to eat butter and honey until he was old enough
to know right from wrong. I can't go along with that. That's
not the meaning. John the Baptist, the scripture
says, was filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother's womb.
That's Luke 1.15. Whenever his mother, Elizabeth,
heard the salutation of Mary, the babe John, the scripture
says, leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the
Holy Ghost. And by the power and grace of
God, John didn't come to an age of accountability. to perceive
something of the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. So, believe
me, a greater than John was being spoken of. Immanuel himself,
God with us, is who was being spoken of. But it was said of
our Lord, though He were a Son, the Son of God, yet learned He
obedience. He knew obedience by practice. He knew it. He actually did it. Somebody said, well, he understood
it. He learned it. That word means
he did by practice, by the things that he suffered. So honey is
truly setting forth the purity of God's provision as far as
food, but it's also symbolic of the blessings of God in the
Lord Jesus Christ. You know, whenever the Lord told
His people that He was going to send them to the land of promise,
that was land of promise. Canaan was a beautiful picture
of heaven itself. Now how did the Lord set forth
that land to be? Here's what Exodus 3.8 says,
I've come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians.
and to bring them up out of that land into a good land and large
unto a land flowing with milk and honey. The land of God's
promise and goodness, the land of His choosing to give unto
His people from the hand of His mercy and compassion in fullness. That's what, when it said it's
a land flowing with milk and honey, that doesn't mean that
Actually, milk and honey was flowing like a river, but it
was setting forth the glory of God's fullness and mercy to His
people in His provision for them. He said, I'm going to give you
the best. You'll have all of your needs supplied according
to His riches in glory by the Lord Jesus Christ. So Solomon
was directed by God's Spirit to instruct us in our need of
natural honey. That's good. I mean, it's good
to eat healthy food. I understand. Because it's good
and sweet to our taste. But to set forth honey also as
the Lord's instruction concerning our need of healthy spiritual
food. To hear the sweetness and the
goodness of the Lord Jesus Christ. He who is the honey and the honeycomb
of heaven. The Scripture says in Proverbs
24 14, So shall the knowledge of wisdom be unto their soul.
He said in verse 13, My son, eat thou honey, because it is
good, and the honeycomb, which is sweet to thy taste, colon,
Now he's going to explain what he just meant. So shall the knowledge
of wisdom be unto thy soul. When thou hast found it, then
there shall be a reward, and thy expectation shall not be
cut off. Christ himself, as I said a moment
ago, the glory, the honey, the honeycomb of the scriptures Because
His meat, His life, His blood, His drink, that is nutrition
spiritually to God's people. Psalm 119, 103 says, Oh, how
sweet are thy words unto my taste, yea, sweeter than honey to my
mouth. It says, you know, honey excites
and satisfies the natural senses of honey is to partake of purity. It's good. And then to partake
of Christ himself. Wisdom himself. That knowledge of Christ himself,
when we've found it, because he found us, There shall be a
reward, and thy expectation shall not be cut off. You know, when
we think of the Lord and the knowledge of the Lord Himself,
the Lord said concerning knowing Him. Again, not merely knowing
something about Him, but knowing Him. That's why He said in John
17, verse 3, This is life eternal, that they might know Thee. The only true God in Jesus Christ
whom thou hast sent, the apostle Paul spoke of that desire for
an increased knowledge of the Lord that he knew and loved and
trusted. He said, oh, in Philippians 3.10,
that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship
of his suffering being made conformable unto his death. Jeremiah was
moved by the Spirit of God, speaking of the knowledge of God, knowing
the Lord. Jeremiah 9, 23, 24, Thus saith
the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither
let the mighty man glory in his might. Let not the rich man glory
in his riches, but let him that glorieth glory in this, that
he understandeth and knoweth me. that I am the Lord which
exercise loving kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth.
For in these things I delight, saith the Lord. You know, scripture
says in verse 14, so shall, like naturally eaten honey, it's good,
it's sweet to taste, so shall the knowledge of wisdom be unto
thy soul. We taste honey and it satisfies
us. It's pleasant, it's refreshing.
He said that's how the knowledge of wisdom is to the soul. When
thou hast found it, and because wisdom has found us first, then
shall be a reward. When we partake of Christ and
the hearing of Him being preached and we feast upon Him in the
Scriptures, and we call upon the Father through Him in prayer,
There's our reward. Our souls are blessed and we've
got the promise of God that He, for Christ's sake, here's a reward.
Think of this reward. I've loved you with an everlasting
love. Why? For Christ's sake. We're at peace with God. There's
a reward. We're at peace with God. Why?
Through the blood of His cross. There's a reward. that we're
one with Him before the Father, and we have this reward. We truly
believe that the Lord's coming back soon. I mean, all of us,
as we get older, we realize this life is a vapor. Think how quickly
it's already gone by. We were just in high school just
the other day. And now here we are, we're all
getting older, and the Lord is coming back for us. So when we
eat honey, when we eat honey humanly speaking, There's no
mistaking what it is. If it's a counterfeit, we're
going to immediately detect it. And then concerning the knowledge
of the Lord Jesus Christ as he set forth in the gospel, I'm
telling you, those that have tasted that he is good, they
don't mistake that taste either. Somebody gives you something,
they say, listen, this is really good honey. And you taste it,
and it has a salty taste. and the consistency's not right,
it's not creamy, and color's just not right, and you say,
you know what? That's not honey. That's not honey. You take a
believer that hears somebody preach, and they're preaching
works, and they're preaching man's will, and man's glory,
and man's ability, and stuff like that, and you say, you know
what? That's not the gospel. You know honey when you taste
it, and you know the gospel when you taste it. So we have His
word of promise and assurance. He says that latter part, He
said, when thou hast found it, then shall be a reward, and thy
expectation, your hope, your attachment to Him shall not be
cut off. Last verse, Romans 8, 38 and
39. Here's the promise we have from
the Lord of the reward that we have in Christ by God's good
pleasure. Romans 8, 38, 39, I'm persuaded
that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities,
nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height,
nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us
from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. The sweetness of wisdom, the
sweetness of honey is sweet. Oh, the sweetness of the knowledge
of Christ, sweet to our souls. I pray that the Lord's pleased
to bless this to our hearts and our understanding for His glory
and our good. Amen.