The Best Christmas Fare
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Psalm 119:103
This is a time of feasting, and we may as well have our feast as other people have theirs. Let us see whether there is not something for our spiritual palate, something to satisfy our spiritual appetite, that we may eat, and be content, and rejoice before the Lord. Do you not think that two of the words in our text are very strange? If you had written them, would you not have said, "How sweet are thy words unto my ear"? The psalmist says, "How sweet are thy words unto my palate!" for that is the word in the margin. He did not write, "Yea, sweeter than honey to my hearing!" but, "sweeter than honey to my mouth!" Are words, then, things that we can taste and eat? No, not if they are the words of man; it would take many of our words to fill a hungry belly. "Be ye warmed and filled": it would take many tons of that sort of fodder to feed "a brother or sister destitute of daily food," for man's words are air and airy, light and frothy. They often deceive, they mock, they awaken hopes which are never realized; but God's words are full of substance, they are spirit, they are life, they are to be fed upon by the spiritually hungry.
Marvel not that I say this to you. It was God's word that made us; is it any wonder that His word should sustain us? If His word gives life, do you wonder that His word should also give food for that life? Marvel not, for it is written: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." God's words are meat, and drink, and food; and if bodies live not upon words, souls and spirits feed upon the words of God, and so are satisfied, and full of delight. This is the language of an eater as well as of a hearer, of one who heard the words, and then ate the words. The expression is oriental, but we are not quite strangers to it, even in our western talk, for we say, "They seem to eat the man's words"; that is, when the hearers are very att ...
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Psalm 119:103
This is a time of feasting, and we may as well have our feast as other people have theirs. Let us see whether there is not something for our spiritual palate, something to satisfy our spiritual appetite, that we may eat, and be content, and rejoice before the Lord. Do you not think that two of the words in our text are very strange? If you had written them, would you not have said, "How sweet are thy words unto my ear"? The psalmist says, "How sweet are thy words unto my palate!" for that is the word in the margin. He did not write, "Yea, sweeter than honey to my hearing!" but, "sweeter than honey to my mouth!" Are words, then, things that we can taste and eat? No, not if they are the words of man; it would take many of our words to fill a hungry belly. "Be ye warmed and filled": it would take many tons of that sort of fodder to feed "a brother or sister destitute of daily food," for man's words are air and airy, light and frothy. They often deceive, they mock, they awaken hopes which are never realized; but God's words are full of substance, they are spirit, they are life, they are to be fed upon by the spiritually hungry.
Marvel not that I say this to you. It was God's word that made us; is it any wonder that His word should sustain us? If His word gives life, do you wonder that His word should also give food for that life? Marvel not, for it is written: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." God's words are meat, and drink, and food; and if bodies live not upon words, souls and spirits feed upon the words of God, and so are satisfied, and full of delight. This is the language of an eater as well as of a hearer, of one who heard the words, and then ate the words. The expression is oriental, but we are not quite strangers to it, even in our western talk, for we say, "They seem to eat the man's words"; that is, when the hearers are very att ...
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